The Islamic State has reminded Russia that this argument cuts no ice with the hardest-core Middle Eastern conservatives, who see Russia as just another part of the Western world that deserves to be attacked.
So Russia needs to cure its split personality disorder. All of Russia's weird anti-Western rhetoric, and the references to "Orthodox Iran" or "our own Islamic State", stand in the way of the foreign policy goal that Vladimir Putin set out in his speech to the UN General Assembly in September: creating a global alliance against terrorism.
The geography of terrorism is losing its borders. For years, there has been a tendency to make a distinction between terrorist threats in Russia and Europe. For the average Westerner--and the average Russian for that matter--if something bad happens in Russia, the root cause lies within Russia itself, but if misfortunes befall the West, we should seek causes outside the West's borders'.
The average person--and this includes politicians and journalists--does not divide the world into categories of democracies and authoritarian regimes, old and new markets, or developed and developing countries. He is more likely to perceive two zones, one of light and one of darkness. In what the Indian writer V.S. Naipaul called an "area of darkness," tragedy and disaster are regarded as everyday occurrences, while in other parts of the world--areas of light--tragic events are viewed as an aberration.
When we look at last Friday in Paris and the recent litany of terrorist attacks in France, we see this distinction blurring. This year, France more resembles a country from the dark zone, where the terrible has become almost commonplace. Its troubles evoke Mikhail Bulgakov's poetic description of Jerusalem in The Master and Margarita: "The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea blotted out the great city. The suspension bridges, the crenelated palace, the bazaars, the caravanserai, the alleyways, the pools... Jerusalem, the great city, vanished as though it had never been. The darkness devoured everything, frightening every living creature in Jerusalem and its surroundings."
The lesson of the Paris attacks is: as the area of darkness shifts, even a strong state's borders do not protect against it anymore. Europeans can no longer neatly divide the world into a realm of light, where bad things aren't supposed to happen, and a dark realm, where they routinely occur. Darkness from one place will creep into others. Perhaps the world needs to regain its clarity, but the biggest priority is to make an honest effort to tackle the real heart of darkness.
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