BY
President Obama called Russia a “regional power” with the obvious
implication that the U.S. should not worry about it too much. He has praised Russia for its “help” in negotiating with
Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry, too, has held up Russia’s cooperation on Syria as an
example “of what happens when Russia and the United States work together.”
Should we follow the administration’s lead in
its basic sanguinity about Russia—or are there grounds for serious and
long-term concern?
1. Is Putin’s Russia a mere 'regional power' or
is it a clear and present danger to U.S. national security—and if so, why?
Putin’s Russia presents an unprecedented
challenge for the U.S.: a revisionist (perhaps even revanchist), nationalist,
ideologically inflamed, messianically minded, dictatorship in possession
of 1,582 strategic nuclear weapons on nearly 500 strategic delivery vehicles.
No, this is not Cold War II in the sense of a
long-term global contest between liberal capitalism and totalitarian communism.
Yet, paradoxically, the Putin regime may be more dangerous in the long run than
the Soviet Union was.
Of course, the Soviet Union had orders of
magnitude more strategic than nukes. But it was ruled by a slow-moving,
deliberative, “collective leadership” gerontocracy that came of political age
at the height of the Stalinist terror and the Nazi invasion. The members of the
oligarchy wanted to live out their days in relative luxury and peace.
Although not averse to going after low-hanging
fruit in Latin America, Africa or Asia, the Politburo was by and large content
with the status quo: strategic nuclear parity with the United States,
unchallenged dominance at home and the preservation of the East-Central
European empire.
By contrast, Putin makes key decisions alone,
brooks no argument and, like every dictator, is furnished by those around him
only with the information that supports his adopted policies. This could
be a recipe for a disaster.
2. Why after 14 years did Putin suddenly decide that
Russia is under attack by NATO and that he needs to assail Ukraine to protect
the motherland?
It was not that sudden. Putin began preparing
his country for a conflict with the West long before the Ukrainian revolution
and the annexation of Crimea. When Putin returned to the presidency in May
2012, it was obvious that the country’s economic growth, which had been the
source of his popularity, was slowing down to a trickle even as oil prices
rebounded to over $100 a barrel.
By the end of 2013, Putin’s popularity was the
lowest since he was elected president in 2000. And his personal popularity was
(and is) the only reliable source of legitimacy for the regime, which is
otherwise widely despised by the majority of Russians, as consistently shown by
public opinion polls.
After rejecting the institutional reforms needed
to radically improve the investment climate by modernizing the economy and
diversifying away from hydrocarbon exports, Putin chose to shift the foundation
of his support from the growth of incomes to patriotic mobilization.
Repression increased, NGOs were attacked as
“foreign agents,” national television channels were turned into state
propaganda outlets, the Russian Orthodox church was elevated to the position of
the arbiter and enforcer of national mores and the “military-patriotic
education” of youth became a top priority.
3. What is the end-goal of Putin’s war on Ukraine?
It is often argued that Putin will settle for a
“frozen conflict” in Ukraine, similar to that in Transnistria or South Ossetia
and Abkhazia by creating de-facto Russian protectorates in the Donetsk and
Luhansk regions as well as in annexed Crimea.
This course of action is possible but not
likely. Ukraine is the largest post-Soviet nation (after Russia) and closest to
Russia ethnically (its capital, Kiev, was the historical cradle of the
Russian state). A stable, democratic and Europe-bound Ukraine would
pose an enormous geopolitical and ideological challenge to the Putin regime. Without
Ukraine, Putin’s cherished plan of a Russia-dominated Eurasian Union serving as
a counterweight to the EU and NATO lacks credibility.
Thus, Putin is not likely to settle for anything
short of a smashing victory in Ukraine, which will include a de-facto
dismemberment of the country and the creation of a Russian proxy state in the
south-east. Yet the ultimate objective is almost certainly the economic and
political destabilization and subversion of the current pro-West regime and its
replacement with a pro-Russia one.
4. Could Putin start a 'hybrid' war on NATO
members in Eastern Europe?
A common view is that Putin would not dare to
deploy the “hybrid” war strategy he has implemented in Ukraine against NATO
member states. The reason: As NATO members, these countries are protected by
Article Five of the NATO Charter and as such are protected by NATO joint
military might and, ultimately, the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
But it is precisely because they are NATO
members that countries comprising significant Russian-speaking minorities (such
as Estonia and Latvia) might be high-value targets for Putin. Patriotic
mobilization requires the maintenance of a propaganda narrative of Russia’s
being at “war” with the West (first and foremost, the U.S.) and occasional
“victories” in the contest with it.
As the Russian economy is contracting and oil
prices are likely to decline further following the lifting of the sanctions on
Iran, battling Ukraine may not be enough to maintain the patriotic fervor at
the pitch demanded by economic hardship.
Putin has already called Ukraine “NATO’s Foreign
Legion,” and testing NATO and exposing it, and especially the U.S., as “paper
tigers” unwilling to go to war with Russia over Estonia or Latvia may be just
the kind of triumph that domestic politics may demand.
5. What should be the U.S. strategy for dealing with
the dangers posed by the Putin regime?
First, understand that Putin is motivated by
domestic economic and political imperatives as well as deeply entrenched and
centrally held convictions. These are all but certain to prove impervious in
the short or perhaps even medium-term to economic sanctions and diplomatic
pressure.
The only strategy with a reasonable chance of
proving effective in the long-run is a patient, firm and persistent policy
aimed at increasing the domestic political costs of the regime’s behavior and
thus forcing it to make difficult choices and eventually modify its behavior.
Thus denying credit to top Russian companies and
banks will force Putin to choose between bailing out Rosneft or Sberbank—and
raising pensions and salaries for his political base—the tens of millions of
Russian pensioners, teachers, doctors and the military—to keep up with
inflation.
In the same vein, providing defensive weapons
and timely intelligence for the Ukrainian military may deny Putin a quick and
decisive victory and regime change in Kiev. This will force him to choose
between a longer war with greater casualties and the resulting domestic
backlash—or scaling down his objectives in Ukraine and settling for less.
Leon Aron is resident scholar and
director of Russian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, on whose site this
article first appeared.
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