Editorial

ON ACCOUNT of a payments dispute with Ukraine, Russia has again resorted to cutting supply of natural gas to Europe. As winter temperatures plummeted, Moscow's messages to Ukraine and its European customers were quite clear. To the former, Russia was saying pay up and have no illusions about being free of Russian influence and moving towards the Western orbit. To the latter, Moscow with its oil and gas riches was underscoring its strategic weight on the energy issue. Russia's behaviour has underpinnings that are more fundamental. In recent years, it has pursued a muscular foreign policy. At one level, it plans to regain its sphere of influence in the 'near abroad' of post-Soviet republics. At another level, Russians - or in particular, the military and security elite around Prime Minister Vladimir Putin - view themselves as the natural heirs to the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. In other words, Russians are exhibiting a classic symptom of a country on the mend: national honour.

In this context, it is understandable that Russians recently voted wartime leader Josef Stalin - a man who expertly stoked national pride - as the country's third greatest Russian (after a mediaeval prince and an early 20th-century reformist premier).

All countries assert national honour to some extent. To many Americans, however, Russia's resurgence poses an existential threat to American hegemony. By and large, this is an accurate perception. But a Russian challenge to American supremacy might not be a bad thing per se. If anything, it has given the United States and the West some grounds for circumspection in executing their foreign policy. Following the war in Georgia, the US backed down from demands to accelerate the admission of Georgia and Ukraine into Nato. Germany - which lies at the heart of Europe - has also been more cautious in its approach towards Russia amid the gas crisis.

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