Just over a century ago, in the aftermath of World War I, almost all of Europe’s empires began the process of disintegration and decolonization. The Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and British empires all declined and fell in the first half of the 20th Century.
But only one empire has fought tooth and nail over the past century to remain intact, the Russian Empire: first as the Soviet Union and today in Vladimir Putin’s imperial project to subjugate Ukraine and other parts of the former USSR under Moscow’s control.
Russia is the last European empire that has never fully decolonized, and this is one of the root causes of Moscow’s persistently revanchist foreign policy. That policy will likely continue until Russia completes the process of decolonization. But how likely is that and what would it take to bring this about? This question is now getting a fair amount of attention in policy circles.
On this week’s Power Vertical Podcast, host Brian Whitmore speaks with journalist and Kremlin-watcher Casey Michel, author of the book American Kleptocracy, who also also authored a recent article in The Atlantic titled “Decolonize Russia” and testified at a recent briefing on Decolonizing Russia at the U.S. Helsinki Commission of the United States Congress.