For more than two decades the
British establishment has brushed off warnings about the threat from Russia.
People like me and my friends in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and elsewhere were
dismissed as paranoid and stuck in the past. Russia, the conventional wisdom
went, was at most a nuisance but certainly not a threat.
Few people in Whitehall or
other European capitals argue that now. Countries such as Sweden, unexcitable
to the point of torpor in their security thinking, are scrambling to meet what
military planners regard as a genuine, even imminent, threat. Conscription is
back on the agenda. Coastal rocket defences are being brought back into
service, including launchers recovered from a military museum.
Russia has rearmed, to the
point that we would be hard-pressed to defend our allies on Nato’s front line
against a military attack. The Kremlin has also mastered the new arts of war:
propaganda, cyberattacks, economic pressure and the targeted use of bribery.
All these have been on display
in eastern Europe for a decade or more. We ignored that.
Now these weapons are being
deployed against us, and we are struggling to cope. Anyone who said a year ago
that Russia would brazenly interfere, perhaps decisively, in the US
presidential election, and that America would be too confused and timid to
respond, would have attracted derision.
Russia is, on paper, much
weaker than the West in terms of GDP, military might, population and alliances.
The Putin regime has failed to diversify the economy, modernise infrastructure
or provide decent public services. Most of the oil and gas revenues have been
squandered or stolen.
But Russia has big — and
possibly crucial — advantages. Vladimir Putin is decisive; we are not. He is
willing to accept economic pain; we are not. He is willing to break the rules;
we are not. He is willing to use force; we are not.
Russia’s aim is no secret. It
wants to upend the multilateral rules-based European security order, which it
regards as hypocritical and unfair. Instead it wants a world of bilateral deals
— on energy, on security, on defence — in which Russia as a big country will
have the upper hand.
Its strategy is simple: divide
and rule. Reward some countries — Hungary under Viktor Orban now, perhaps
France under President Fillon next year — for playing along. Conversely, Russia
will punish others — Georgia and Ukraine so far, perhaps Estonia or Poland soon
— for daring to resist.
It’s working. The glue that
holds the West together is weakening. As The Times reported on
Saturday, the National Security Council is hurriedly reassessing Britain’s
vulnerabilities in the run-up to a session to be chaired by the prime minister
early in the new year. This is all too little, too late. The realisation
dawning, belatedly, among the guardians of our security is that Russia is
winning, and will continue to win.
The first step is to realise
the plight we are in. We can no longer rely on America to defend us. Indeed, if
our worst fears about the Trump administration prove true, we may find America
is harming, not helping, our security. It is easy to imagine the US
arm-twisting its European allies to “get with the programme”, demilitarising
the frontline states, abandoning Ukraine and dropping sanctions, all in the
name of combined Russian-American efforts on counterterrorism.
Such benefits would be
illusory. Nothing is stopping Russia co-operating with the West on
counterterrorism right now. The sacrifices made in such a “grand bargain” would
be real.
We should fight to prevent
such an outcome. But we should also prepare for the worst: a post-Atlanticist
Europe, where the tentacles of Russian influence will have gripped many of our
Nato allies. That will be difficult, but it is not necessarily disastrous. We
still have all the means to defend ourselves. The frontline states in Europe —
the Nordic and Baltic nations plus Poland — have a combined GDP bigger than
Russia.
The defence spending of those
nine countries is half Russia’s. But Russia has to run a superpower-style
military apparatus, with global pretensions. The frontline states need only
defend themselves.
Add Britain into the mix,
nuclear-armed, and an intelligence and cyber-superpower, plus a few other
allies such as Canada, and we can still outgun Russia on every front.
But we need to start playing
to our strengths. The biggest of these is financial. We cannot stop Russia’s
kleptocrats stealing billions from their own people but we can make it harder
for them to launder their money through our banking system.
An amendment to the Criminal
Finance Bill working its way through parliament offers just such a chance. It
is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was beaten to death after
uncovering a £150 million fraud against the taxpayer, the proceeds of which
were partially laundered in London.
If Theresa May is serious
about defending this country, adding government support to this cross-party
initiative and ignoring the self-interested squawks of the City will be a good
start. The amendment will allow the government or other interested parties to ask
a court to freeze assets in this country belonging to those connected with
human rights abuses.
This sort of measure hits the
Putin regime where it hurts. Those involved in the persecution of Crimean
Tatars or the maltreatment of Ukrainian prisoners might think again if they
knew their personal finances were at risk.
More broadly, we need to join
up the different elements of government and society touched by the Russian
threat. Cybercrime, for example, is not just a matter for the criminal justice
system when Russians are involved. The same people may also be working on
behalf of the Kremlin’s intelligence services.
Our bankers, lawyers and
accountants need to think far harder about the clients and the instructions
that they accept. Our universities are vulnerable too, as the furore over
alleged Russian sponsorship of the Cambridge University weekly intelligence
seminar indicates.
As we have seen elsewhere,
Russia pumps money into other countries’ public life, through media, think
tanks, politics or academia. The aim may be intelligence collection,
influence-peddling or other mischief-making. The Soviet Union tried to do the
same. But we are much less wary now.
We need clear mechanisms for
sharing information about Russian meddling in our societies, and taking joint
action against the threat. It’s not impossible. Our allies in the frontline
states see the Russian threat far more clearly than we do, and are ahead of us
in countering it. We should try listening to them.
Edward Lucas writes for The
Economist. He is author of The New Cold War
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