By Brian Stewart
Wednesday, January 26, 2022
For millennia, the frontiers of territories that occupy
the plains between the Baltic and the Black Seas have been drawn by force. In
the past century, during the five-year course of the Russian civil war, to
give one example, no fewer than 11 armies—from the forces of the
independent Ukrainian Republic to the White Russians to the Bolsheviks to the
Poles—fought to take and hold Ukraine.
Plus ça change. “We’re deeply concerned by
evidence that Russia has made plans for significant aggressive moves against
Ukraine,” declared Secretary of State Anthony Blinken last
December at a meeting of NATO ministers in Latvia. “The plans include efforts
to destabilize Ukraine from within, as well as large scale military
operations.” In other words, Russia may be planning a coup in Kyiv or expanding
its invasion of Ukrainian territory—which it began by seizing and annexing
the Crimean Peninsula in 2014—in short order. Such a gambit would not
merely compromise Ukraine’s sovereignty and national self-determination. It
would effectively bring down the curtain on the U.S.-led security order
that has protected Europe since the end of World War II.
What motivates the Russian Federation’s desire
to disrupt and ultimately destroy the post–Cold War status quo in this manner?
The Kremlin contends that the source of today’s antagonism between itself
and the West is to be found in the upending of Russia’s status and
position in the post–Cold War world. At the top of the list of Russian
grievances in this era has been the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) to include former members of the Soviet-era Warsaw Pact.
Vladimir Putin believes that
this U.S.-led march against post-Soviet Russia has impinged upon core Russian
interests, leaving his country “nowhere further to
retreat.” Russia’s “spheres of privileged interests,” to use former
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s phrase, must be reclaimed. Here Ukraine
presents a rare acid test since Russian leaders believe, as Putin remarked to
President Bush in 2008, that Ukraine “isn’t even a country”—and
certainly not a member of the hallowed Atlantic alliance.
Putin has created the strange state of suspended
animation in which Ukraine has existed since 2014—the sense that Europe’s
largest borderland state is not quite in the clutches of the Russian bear
but not at a safe remove from it, either. In a remarkable 5,000-word essay published
in 2021, he laid bare his (and, if the polls are to be believed, three-quarters
of the Russian people’s) deep-seated hopes—and
fears—regarding Russia’s large neighbor on the Black Sea.
The subject of Putin’s missive, which was distributed to
every soldier in the Russian army, was “the historical unity of Russians
and Ukrainians,” and he warned that this supposedly proud and
ancient relationship was at risk. Russian-Ukrainian unity, Putin averred,
has been endangered by forces within Ukraine and without, playing
a “dangerous geopolitical game” by steering that nation into the Western
orbit. He insisted that this disrespectful design is rupturing the natural
comity between these two peoples and deploying Ukraine as a “springboard
against Russia.”
In Putin’s eyes, Ukraine needs to remain in
Moscow’s sphere of influence in perpetuity for Russia to reestablish
itself as the principal power in Europe. From what we can tell, he has the
support of the Russian people in this regard. In his book Between Two Fires, Joshua
Yoffe cites polling data from 2014 according to which some 75 percent of
Russians then favored a full-scale invasion of Ukraine—but Yoffe also notes that
very few Russians have expressed a willingness to bear any real costs for such
military adventurism. This form of doublethink, Yoffe argues, reveals the
“wily” ability of rank-and-file Russian citizens to both endorse their rulers’
whims and insist that they be spared the logical and predictable consequences.
For Putin’s clique, maintaining Moscow’s grip
over Ukraine is also perceived as critical to upholding the Orthodox
and Slavic character of the Russian state. (After his show of force brought
Crimea back into Russian hands, Putin announced to Russia’s political elite
that the peninsula was properly Russian since it was the baptismal site of
Vladimir the Great, the first Russian czar to adopt Orthodoxy.) The
Russian Orthodox Church has repaid the compliment, offering vociferous
rhetorical succor to the Putin regime. This has led Sergei Chapnin, editor
of the official journal of the patriarchate, to lament that the Russian
Orthodox Church is now a “Church of Empire”—“a post-Soviet civil religion
providing ideological support for the Russian state.”
The notion of an independent Ukraine going its own way in
spiritual affairs and even aligning with the godless West is thus anathema. But
it is Ukraine’s status as a democracy—an imperfect but competitive multiparty
system—that makes it a personal affront to those in the Kremlin. Putin and
his ilk fear, not unjustifiably, that the external forces of liberalism will
serve, explicitly and implicitly, to undercut authoritarian rule in Russia.
The Russian regime has been manifestly on guard against
democratic revolutions in neighboring states since the uprisings in
Georgia and Ukraine in 2003 and 2004. The alarm was aggravated in 2011 by the
disastrous Russian parliamentary elections, which spawned widespread protests
against a fraudulent democracy that merely existed to enshrine Putin on the
throne. The presence of a flawed but thriving democratic nation (nearly a third
of which are native Russian speakers) along the Russian frontier cannot help
but present a rebuke to the pretensions of the Putin regime. Hence Putin’s
letter—reminiscent of one penned by a jilted lover—alternating between cloying
proclamations of affection and thinly veiled threats of violence.
Of course, such threats are hardly idle. In February 2014,
Ukraine’s pro-Russia president Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in a popular
uprising—the “Maidan Revolution”—after rejecting an economic agreement with the
European Union, in fealty to his masters in Moscow. His successors opted for
closer economic and political relations with the EU, culminating in an
agreement that expressed joint support for Ukraine becoming a fully fledged
member of the EU one day. In retaliation, Putin decided to flout the 1994
Budapest Memorandum guaranteeing Ukrainian sovereignty—which Russia signed in
exchange for the surrender of Ukraine’s vast nuclear arsenal. Putin seized
Crimea and fomented a civil conflict in the country’s southeastern region
known as the Donbass that continues to this day. Little has been done by
Western powers to punish this bellicosity, which in one fell swoop changed
Europe’s borders by force for the first time since the end of the Second
World War.
President Obama warned Putin in March 2014 not to move
Russian troops against Ukraine. Then, within a fortnight of that warning,
Russian troops launched a hybrid war and paid scarcely any penalty that might
have made it regret or reverse its decision. Today, with Russian forces now
massed on Ukraine’s borders, Putin stands ready to continue his depredations
at a moment of his choosing—or extract nontrivial concessions from the West
before standing down.
Russia’s apologists, seeking to justify Putin’s past and
future aggressions, have advanced the Kremlin line that NATO’s
“encircling” of Russia is evidence of a Cold War mentality. In this view, the West’s sanctions
against the Kremlin and its unceasing interference in Russia’s internal
affairs somehow leave Putin no choice but to harass and invade his
neighbors. According to the neo-isolationists at the
Quincy Institute, a new think tank lavishly funded both by the libertarian
Koch Foundation and the leftist Open Society Foundation, the West could simply
resolve this prolonged standoff by treating Putin as a nuisance instead of a great-power
adversary. But the truth is a good deal more complicated. Putin operates
on a long-standing conviction that Russia’s chief adversary has been and
remains the U.S.-led liberal order, and he will not relent until he has
damaged that order beyond repair.
For more than two decades, Putin’s revanchist regime
has been intent on reconstituting the Soviet Empire under the fig leaf of its
vaunted “Eurasian Union.” He has made no secret of his belief
that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a national tragedy, and he openly
aspires to the restoration of a Greater Russia. (Even the Russian hockey team
recently donned Soviet jerseys.) In the project to bring
Soviet republics back under Russian sway, Ukraine seems to occupy
a special position. Closely linked to Russia historically and
culturally, Ukraine has nonetheless resisted the tide of authoritarianism that
has swept over other former vassal states in Russia’s near-abroad.
Despite endemic corruption and political dysfunction in Kyiv, Ukrainians
have maintained their commitment to a free and fair electoral system.
Everything we know about Putin suggests he fears that the seeds of this
democratic example will spread unless it’s promptly stamped out.
The Kremlin clearly fears it will not be able to see that
through without incurring steep costs, on the battlefield and in global
public opinion. A costly military campaign could incite domestic dissent
in Russia as well as increased support in the West for harsher sanctions
against Russia and higher contributions to NATO military spending. But how
costly that campaign might prove to be depends chiefly on Ukrainians and their
foreign patrons. So far, Putin has not been put on notice in any way save
some strong rhetoric. The Biden administration’s decisions to forgo sanctions
on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which ships Russian oil directly to Western
Europe, and hold multiple summits with Putin have sent the opposite signal. Such
feebleness has had the perverse effect of emboldening the Kremlin to seek more
concessions from the West. The White House is compounding the error by lobbying
against bipartisan legislation to amend the National Defense Authorization Act
to reimpose sanctions against Nord Stream 2 and to expand the number of Russian
officials listed in the Global Magnitsky Act.
Ukraine is the biggest conceivable prize for
Putin—something akin to what Taiwan represents for the People’s Republic
of China. However many sweet words Putin may scribble or speak on behalf of
Russo-Ukrainian brotherhood, his intention to reduce
Ukraine’s independence and incorporate it as a satellite dictatorship in
the manner of Belarus is unmistakable. It’s the prerequisite for summoning
the rebirth of “historical Russia” that suffered lethal blows with the
collapse of the Berlin Wall.
There are two stumbling blocks standing in the way of
that objective, however: one internal and one external. The first is that most
Ukrainians have taken the measure of their truculent autocratic neighbor.
Since the outbreak of hostilities, public opinion has turned swiftly against the Russian regime, and not
just in western Ukraine. Across the country, young Ukrainians have been given
an indelible image of Russian menace that no disinformation campaign will
efface. Clear majorities of Ukrainians abhor the prospect of a
Russian-dominated future, and a large number have shown themselves willing to
fight to prevent it.
The second factor working against Russia’s imperial
designs, of course, is the strength and coherence of the West. If it ever
managed to close ranks against Russian authoritarianism at home and
aggression abroad, the democratic world would almost certainly present an
insurmountable obstacle to Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine and beyond.
Alas, he clearly senses that the democratic world is profoundly
divided on the question of using its immense power. As Lenin put it: “Probe
with bayonets: if you encounter mush, proceed. If you encounter steel,
withdraw.”
With the West’s deterrent capacity patently diminishing
since Russia’s aggression in 2014, Putin surely feels he
should act boldly once he is convinced the costs of his salami
tactics will not be prohibitively high. As part of the calculation of the
Russian interest, the Kremlin knows well that the West is bereft of competent,
let alone spirited, leadership. The Biden administration has offered little
indication that it takes military power seriously. Germany, which some deluded
observers imagine to be the leader of the free world, has a new leader in Olaf Scholz who is decidedly soft on Russia
and governs a country that—to borrow a line from Lee Kuan Yew—tends to
bend before the wind blows. By these paltry standards, only France has
(belatedly) shown a pulse of determination to check Russian ambitions and
foreclose the option of a new agreement along the lines of the Yalta deal with
Stalin in 1945.
To ensure the continued peace of Europe—since
Putin’s aggression will certainly not stop in the Donbass—greater American
activism will be required. The alternative to America fulfilling its
responsibilities would be a bullying behemoth acting confidently to subvert and
pick off its neighbors one by one. A parade of horribles would likely follow
any serious example of American retrenchment. An emboldened Russian regime
vigorously pressing its claims in the borderlands of Europe would beget the
disruption of critical supply chains, including energy resources and food
imports to the EU. It would trigger an exodus from east to west, putting
further strain on prosperous European states that have still not recovered from
the refugee crisis of the last decade. Worst of all, it would unleash frightening
new security dilemmas throughout Europe and in other theaters of potential
conflict.
This can happen even if Ukraine is not actually
dismembered by a wider Russian occupation. If Western powers conspire to
prevent armed conflict by giving Russia an effective veto over Ukraine’s
accession to the European Union or NATO, or if Putin is permitted to
dictate the defensive capabilities of its neighbors already under the NATO
umbrella, the principle of collective security and the linchpin of European
order since 1945 would be nullified. That Ukraine isn’t a NATO partner will be
of no more consolation than the fact that Kuwait wasn’t part of the Atlantic
community when Saddam Hussein sought to annex it into a Greater Iraq in
1990. If armed force can be employed with impunity to alter borders on the
continent that provides the fulcrum of the liberal world order, the perception
will naturally arise that the liberal order has gone the way of the snows of
yesteryear.
It is not the Kremlin’s martial restraint and
liberal spirit that have kept Europe’s postmodern paradise peaceful since
the end of the cold war. As implausible as it may sound, the only thing
keeping Russian tanks out of nearby foreign capitals at this very
moment is the reliability of the American security guarantee. But if
Putin can make a reality out of his outrageous and oxymoronic claim that “true sovereignty of Ukraine is
possible only in partnership with Russia,” he will come to doubt the meaning of
that guarantee. Undeterred and unchecked, he will perceive a much wider
opportunity to assail the Baltic states and test the founding tenet
of NATO—which is that none of its members will be molested without a
devastating collective response. At which point, the Atlantic alliance will be
faced with a terrible choice: to defend, say, Estonia against a ferocious
Russian onslaught, or to show before the entire world that its security
guarantees have ceased to be reliable, if they ever were.
In this grim scenario, Putin’s potent combination of
force and guile will have forged a “New Yalta”—demarcating an expansive
Russian sphere of influence. It will also have reclaimed a kind of imperial
grandeur that makes less preposterous its aspiration to become a strategic
equal of the United States. Worse still, it will leave a series of disturbing
questions in the minds of tyrants and forces of menace everywhere: In what cause
will a postmodern Europe take up arms? Is America’s famed martial culture a
thing of the past? And most unnerving of all: Are there any redlines left
at all?
What kind of actions can arrest the descent into
that kind of world? For starters, a robust diplo-matic push will be
necessary to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty. The U.S. should
coordinate immediately with its strongest partners in Europe to impose more
punitive sanctions than have heretofore been imposed against Russian oligarchs.
Nord Stream 2 should be scrapped at once. Russia’s state-owned banks and energy
firms are particularly vulnerable for financial squeezing if Europe—which
in this case means largely Germany—and America muster the will.
However critical these economic measures are to
deterring the next bout of Russian adventurism, they will prove woefully
insufficient unless supplemented by what Theodore Roosevelt called the “big
stick.” To the dismay of observers who bemoan the abiding necessity
of power in our world, Washington needs to provide Ukraine with lethal
military assistance. Without it, Ukrainian forces stand little chance of
deterring, let alone defeating, Russian-backed separatists and, potentially,
Russian forces on the battlefield.
Ukraine is no pygmy. It fields one of the
strongest ground forces in Europe, including 400,000 combat-ready soldiers.
Nonetheless, Russia outguns it across numerous dimensions with its
advanced airpower, naval power, and rocket systems. This formidable and
versatile arsenal can wreak havoc on Ukrainian forces and even Ukrainian
infrastructure. To mitigate these threats, Kyiv needs an arsenal of its
own strong enough to deter Russian hostile action. According to Ukraine’s
ministry of defense, it is deficient in enhanced anti-aircraft, anti-ship,
and anti-missile defense (including Patriot anti-aircraft and missile-defense
systems) as well as electronic and anti-drone weaponry, along with
artillery and mortar systems, reconnaissance and medical equipment, ships and
boats. If its sovereignty is to mean anything, Ukraine must be provided these
capabilities without delay.
This kind of assertive American leadership will draw
criticism from the usual suspects who claim that any support for Ukraine
is “provocative” and that President Biden would
thereby be inviting war. But it’s bizarre to believe that
ensuring a high price for aggression will somehow make Putin more likely to
commit it. Whatever the Kremlin and the Quincy Institute might say, concerted
and credible policies to deter aggression in Ukraine are not risking a war. At
this hour, they may be the only means of preventing one.
No comments:
Post a Comment