A deceptive late-summer pause has settled over the Ukraine crisis. At
least, in the coverage of it. For many weeks now, the war
in the Donbas has slipped
off the front page. Although leaders such as Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel
and Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko still search for an acceptable formula
to end the war, it has continued in the southeast corner of Ukraine, with
casualties mounting.
Who fired first is no longer a relevant question. The point is that the
war stumbles along with no end in sight. The twin rebel “republics” of Donetsk
and Luhansk have slowly frozen into a Russian stronghold, effectively detached
from the rest of Ukraine. They are always available to be manipulated as a
pro-Russian weapon in the East-West battle for Ukraine’s future.
Warming up?
Ukraine is no longer the top priority for American diplomats. They are
understandably absorbed with selling the Iran nuclear deal to a reluctant
Congress. But, if Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is to be believed,
there are a number of senior officials who
have also been sending signals to Russia suggesting that President Obama wants to turn a page and improve his
frosty relations with President Vladimir Putin. “We are already getting such
signals from the Americans,” Lavrov said, “though for now not very clear.”
Would Russia be open to better relations? Russia, responded the foreign
minister, would “consider constructively” any such possibility.
Putin seemed more positive. As he told American former boxing champion
Roy Jones, Jr. last week: “We have had different kinds of relations at
different times, but whenever America and Russia’s higher interest demands it,
we always found the strength to build relations in the best possible way.” One
possible translation: Putin now wants to emerge from the shadows of the Ukraine
crisis and restore better relations with the West.
But, Obama and his top advisers, burned once by Putin when he shocked
everyone and seized Crimea in late February 2014, do not want to be burned
again. They realize that Putin—once a KGB colonel, now a modern Peter the Great
(with a smidgen of Stalin)—is still capable, if he chooses, of throwing Europe
and the world into a Cold War-style confrontation. If left unchecked, that
could quickly dominate not only newspaper headlines but also global
calculations about war and peace. He has that kind of clout.
Managed instability
Though Russia is not the Soviet Union, it still remains the boss of
Eastern Europe. When it sneezes, as we have learned, Ukraine can catch a bad
cold. These days, everything in and around Ukraine seems to be in what
one journalist called “managed instability.” Putin can bring the crisis closer to a possible solution or he can widen
the war. Or, more simply, he can “freeze” it. The key question is: What does
Putin have in mind? What are his plans, assuming that he has plans, and is not
winging the crisis day by day?
One line of reasoning, comforting to an extent, is that for the moment
Putin has a plate full of challenges, more than enough to keep him busy. This
makes him less inclined to shoot from the hip and more interested in an
accommodation with the West. What else explains his and Lavrov’s overtures to
the United States? Putin knows (or should) that Russia’s economy is a mess,
caused in part by Western economic sanctions against Russia and by falling oil
prices. Official statistics show a
4.9 percent decline in gross domestic product in the second quarter of 2015, compared to the same quarter a year ago.
Inflation may soar to
17 percent this year. Incomes have had to
be drastically reduced, setting off mini-strikes in different parts of the
country.
With respect to Ukraine, Putin’s position is hardly ideal, but it is
still manageable. He now owns Crimea and controls two rebellious provinces in
the southeast Donbas region. He knows Ukraine faces the possibility of economic
collapse, even though it has made some progress. The more it slips toward the
abyss, the better his chances, he thinks, of keeping Ukraine out of the Western
orbit, which has always been one of his principal goals. Putin has the assets
to throw Ukraine into further chaos at any time.
Another line of argument, much less comforting, is that Putin has merely
been waiting for the right moment to widen the war in Ukraine and perhaps
elsewhere. Rebel fighters in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, supported by
Russian forces, have recently been engaged in non-stop maneuvers, perhaps
preparatory to a move on the strategic port of Mariupol, still in Ukrainian
hands. If Putin decided to strike, Western analysts believe that it would be a
tough fight but that ultimately the pro-Russian forces would win. The
Poroshenko regime would then be pushed to the edge of collapse.
How far would the West go?
But far more threatening to the West—specifically to NATO—is that Putin
might launch a sophisticated hybrid attack into the Baltics, starting with
Estonia, where 24 percent of the population is Russian.
Because Estonia is a member of NATO, it can and would almost certainly
invoke Article V, which says that an attack on one NATO member would be
regarded as an attack on all. President Obama promised last year during a visit
to the Baltics that the United States would honor Article V. In recent weeks,
apparently concerned about expanding NATO maneuvers, Russian generals have gone
out of their way to deny that they have any intention of invading the
Baltics.
Would Putin really go that far? Would the United States, tired from
non-stop wars in the Middle East, really roll up its sleeves and fight for
Estonia? Neither is very likely. So, what now? Unfortunately, so much of the
answer lies in Putin’s strategy, so murky and unpredictable to outsiders and
maybe to him and his advisers as well.
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