hankyoreh

President Xi Jinping of China and President Vladimir Putin of Russia. (Reuters/Yonhap file photo)

The secret to Vladimir Putin’s iron-fisted rule of Russia over the past 23 years is his demonstration that he’s strong enough to protect the power, wealth and welfare of the country’s privileged classes. Putin has been brutal in his rule, employing all available methods — including assassinations, wars, nuclear blackmail and fake news — to enable his “siloviki” buddies from the military and secret police to bully the public while profiting handsomely from the energy and arms industries they control.

While most of the public is cut off from those advantages, Putin has still managed to secure their support by promising to restore the greatness of the Russian Empire. As proof of that restoration, he has repeatedly sought to subjugate countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.

The rebellion by Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the mercenary army known as the Wagner Group, lasted for all of 36 hours this past weekend, but it still shows that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has started to endanger him. That’s the same invasion, readers will recall, that Putin mistakenly thought would install a pro-Russian government in Kyiv in the space of a week.

While Putin probably isn’t on the verge of being toppled, Russians have now seen his frailty under pressure, shattering the myth of the “invincible leader.”

Putin claims that he launched Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine because NATO’s eastward expansion threatened Russia’s national security. But Prigozhin dropped a bombshell: Putin’s stated rationale was merely a pretext, he said; the invasion was actually designed to benefit the Russian military elite.

The imperialistic nature of the invasion and the attempted subjugation of sovereign Ukraine by Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has now become clear, along with the fact that under Putin’s “czarist” turn, Russia has degenerated into a medieval state roamed by mercenary bands.

Prigozhin’s rebellion is a troubling development for President Xi Jinping of China, who has sworn to build a “multipolar system against American hegemony” through a “no-limits partnership” with Putin.

While Prigozhin and his soldiers were rapidly advancing on Moscow, the Chinese government and its state-run press stayed mum amid intense interest from the Chinese public.

Hardheaded Chinese patriots rooted for Putin, but I couldn’t help noticing posts comparing Prigozhin to An Lushan, the Chinese general whose revolt in the eighth century set the stage for the Tang dynasty’s decline, as well as a debate over whether the People’s Liberation Army ought to be controlled by the party as it is at present.

Some people — using private chat rooms to duck the censors — even whispered about the need for China to change its policy on Taiwan, since a failed attempt to force the self-governing island back into the fold could be disastrous for China.

The fact that Russia, until recently, hadn’t been seriously damaged by economic sanctions from the US and other Western countries had reassured China that the world order no longer bends to the US’ will. China had also researched several scenarios about a potential war with Taiwan while closely watching the course of the war in Ukraine, experts on China report. China has concluded that the prolongation of the war serves China’s interests.

But Prigozhin’s rebellion makes it necessary for China to reevaluate Putin’s strategic value and consider whether the almost complete lack of resistance to the rebels during their push toward Moscow signifies that Putin’s rule is weakening. While Xi Jinping continues to prop up the Putin regime, he’s no doubt devising plans to maximize China’s own interests.

Korean progressives, who have extensively debated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, need to take Prigozhin’s rebellion as an occasion for some serious soul-searching. There’s been much sympathy for Russia’s claims and hopes for the “multipolar system” that China and Russia are seeking to build against American hegemony, and such views have impacted the Democratic Party’s foreign policy.

In a presidential debate last February, Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung remarked that a “novice politician” — referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — had “goaded Russia until war eventually broke out.”

Lee Rae-kyung, a prominent activist who was nominated to lead internal reform at the Democratic Party, had to withdraw his candidacy amid a furor over remarks about Putin’s arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court being invalid, the responsibility for the war lying at the feet of the Western and Ukrainian elite, and China’s oppression of the Uyghurs being an American fabrication.

Democratic Party lawmakers who had just returned from a visit to Tibet caused a major hullabaloo when they said that human rights abuses there stopped 70 years ago.

There’s no doubt that President Yoon Suk-yeol has adopted a perilous foreign policy. He’s stoking tensions with China through his unbalanced support of the US and Japan and inciting anti-Chinese sentiment with the hope that it will pay dividends in domestic politics. His big talk about basing diplomacy on the values of democracy and freedom rings hollow given his penchant for siccing the prosecutors on his political enemies.

But in our opposition to Yoon’s “values diplomacy,” we must be careful not to slip into “valueless diplomacy.” For there to be any hope of change, the progressive camp needs to offer a better alternative, involving a more balanced approach to values, that can win public approval. If Korea is to play an important role in forging a new international order that will untangle the chaos and rectify the inequality of the world, we need to know exactly how the international order is changing and rethink the identity of progressive foreign policy.

Criticism of American hegemony cannot mean unconditional support for China and Russia. It’s important to manage relations with China and Russia and engage in dialogue with them, but at the same time, we must not ignore the issues with those two countries.

Just as racial discrimination, refugee issues and police brutality must be squarely faced if we’re to properly understand the current reality in the US, we need to be clear-eyed about the issues of military aggression, ethnic oppression and human rights violations if we’re to properly understand the current reality in Russia and China and arrive at appropriate foreign policy principles.

I’m concerned that ignoring these issues could erase the historic legacy of Korean progressives’ struggle against dictatorial regimes.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]