The Russian army is occupying Crimea. The lack of insignia and Kremlin’s assertion that these are “Crimean self-defense forces” is a cute twist, but it’s not fooling anybody. But it’s also clear that a significant portion of Crimea’s population opposes the new rebellious government in Kiev and welcomes the Russian intervention.
Whether Crimea has a right to secede from Ukraine — after a referendum conducted fairly, with international observers monitoring the vote and without troops on the streets — is an interesting question, but irrelevant in the big picture. This crisis was never about Crimea, which is merely a pawn on a vast East vs. West chessboard – regardless of Obama’s naïve insistence (which is also not fooling anybody) that the upheaval unfolding in Ukraine is no zero-sum game. Viewed from the Kremlin’s perspective, it certainly is, and Putin is reacting to losing a rook by trying to get at least a pawn back – as a starting point, anyway.
I will not attempt to judge the morality of Putin’s regime, Maidan’s rebels, or their Western supporters. Plenty of other pundits on both sides of the barricades have done so. The goal of this essay is to understand the motivations on both sides, try to anticipate their future moves and potential outcomes, and suggest a middle-ground compromise that could defuse the disastrous confrontation and save lives.
1. What are Russia’s fears and motivations?
When talking about Russia, one must be careful to distinguish between Putin’s government and the Russian people. While some of their motivations in Ukraine may overlap, we should presume that Putin’s actions are mostly self-interested and do not necessarily coincide with the long-term interests of the Russian nation.
Most likely, Putin’s primary motivation is preservation of power. Viewed from that perspective, what’s at stake in Ukraine for Putin and Russia’s ruling elite? Everything. The overthrow of Yanukovych not only provides a potential blueprint for a revolution in Russia itself – threatening Putin’s seat in the Kremlin, his dachas, and his life. More ominously, it creates a large hostile state on Russia’s border that could be used by forces hostile to Russia as a springboard to launch such an overthrow.
One outcome that is increasingly unlikely (absent Russian armed intervention) is that Ukraine could somehow return to its prior status as a Russian ally or at least a reliably neutral state that is generally friendly to Russia. Looking further down the road, Ukraine is likely to become either (1) a corrupt failed state – a nebulous collection of fiefdoms run by oligarchs and their private armies, adrift from both Russia and the West, without a centralized law enforcement system – or (2) a Western protectorate, possibly a member of NATO. Neither outcome can be acceptable to Putin.
In the first scenario, Ukraine could morph into a European version of Afghanistan, dominated by anti-Putinist armed groups — some of which will include Russian nationals disgruntled with Putin’s regime, with a sprinkling of Chechens, Georgians and others who have an axe to grind with the Kremlin. Eventually, they will be tempted to take their campaign across the vast border with Russia and foment an uprising in Russia itself. Most guerilla movements tend to thrive when they can use a neighboring territory sympathetic to their cause as a safe haven – like the Syrian rebels, who get reinforcements and supplies from Turkey and Jordan. A dysfunctional Ukraine could act as such a home base for Russian partisans, just as Georgia has long harbored Chechen rebels, and — for the first time since the Russian Civil War — an anti-government guerilla movement inside the Russian mainland would become a plausible possibility. Such a guerilla war, funded by the West and by rebellious oligarchs like Khodorkovsky, is Putin’s Ground Zero nightmare.
In the second scenario, Ukraine becomes a proud NATO member and American tanks are now stationed 300 miles away from Moscow, while the Ukrainian skies are guarded by F-16 squadrons. A guerilla movement fueled from Ukraine still remains a real possibility. But now Ukraine is also protected by the NATO umbrella and could be directed by the West to act against Russia’s interests in the next confrontation between the West and Russia, even if the majority of Ukrainian people would prefer to stay on the sidelines. For Putin, this scenario is even worse.
The fear of NATO, and more particularly NATO’s expansion, runs central through the modern Russian national psyche. Here, the interests of Putin and the majority of the Russian people are aligned. It is likely that any Russian President who permits Ukraine to join NATO without a fight would be viewed as a traitor at home by the majority of his constituents.
Zooming back a bit, the Russian people have not always viewed the West as an adversary. Despite relentless anti-Western propaganda under the Soviet regime, or perhaps because of it, most ordinary Soviet people had a fascination with Western culture and values. When the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia gave away her colonies (buoyed by Western assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction will not expand beyond Western Europe), many people expected Russia to be welcomed with open arms into the Western family. But that did not happen.
Instead, what the Russians saw was NATO’s bombing of Serbia, the expansion of NATO into Russia’s former colonies (infuriating the Russians, who will always feel entitled to a “sphere of influence” adjacent to their borders), and a collapse of the Russian economy blamed (fairly or not) on Western-trained liberals. A huge Western aid package is now in the works for Ukraine. But where was the West’s Marshall Plan for Russia, when it could have bought the West much-needed goodwill with the Russian people?
The West blew a golden opportunity to install and nurture a pro-Western regime in Russia in the 1990’s. One can debate how real the opportunity was, but the West did not seize upon it and is now fighting a costly rear-guard battle against a resurgent Russia led by Putin. Indeed, the West’s hostility towards Russia and the malaise of the Yeltsin years paved the way for Putin, who tapped into Russian nationalism by promising a return to law and order and to Russian glory – and then delivering, crushing Chechen rebels in the Battle of Grozny, Part III and presiding over an economic recovery (admittedly, mostly fueled by rising oil prices). By continuing to fight the Cold War after Russia had already surrendered, and further humiliating Russia, the West — willingly or not — has facilitated the beginning of a second Cold War and is now reaping a bitter harvest.
From Putin’s perspective, the confrontation is probably a welcome sight – it may be the key factor that keeps him in power these days. The NATO bogeyman helps to rally a solid Russian majority around him, regardless of what the Russians think of his personal merits. We must stand together. The Americans are trying to encircle us.
This narrative, whether paranoid or real, was further fueled by Ukraine’s first Orange Revolution in 2004 and Mikheil Saakashvili’s rise in Georgia, both of which were viewed in Moscow as part of a global anti-Russian conspiracy aided and abetted by the West. However, back then Russia did not intervene. Why not? Understanding the reasons for Russia’s non-intervention might help discern the motivations for Russia’s response to the current crisis.
2. The Genesis of Russian Intervention.
Why didn’t Putin try to crush the 2004 Orange Revolution? One simple response might be that he was caught off guard and ill-prepared. In 2004, Russia was still rebuilding its armed forces after a decade of neglect under Yeltsin. (By 2008, they were well-prepared for Saakashvili’s suicidal foray into North Ossetia.) Also, Bush and his hawkish crowd were in power in Washington and still riding high after rolling up Saddam, while the American economy was booming. Picking a confrontation with an America on steroids back then would have been a much riskier gamble. By contrast, in 2014 Putin is confident that Obama, and the insolvent Western governments who still haven’t figured out how to pay the bill for the Great Recession, have no appetite for a war over Ukraine.
Second, armed intervention in 2004 would have been much harder to sell to the Russian people. The protests in the Ukrainian streets were peaceful and bloodless, and centered on reversing an election fraud. The Ukrainian state did not collapse; indeed the rule of law ultimately prevailed when a second election was ordered by the Ukrainian Supreme Court, was fairly conducted and Viktor Yushchenko won. The Kremlin would have been hard-pressed to justify a military invasion designed to undo the results of a properly administered popular election.
By contrast, the 2014 Euromaidan revolt was violent and centered on unseating prematurely a popularly elected (albeit corrupt and incompetent) President. The Kremlin’s assertion that the current government in Kiev is not legitimate has a grain of truth to it. Yanukovych was never impeached in accordance with Ukrainian law. He was forced to flee from an armed revolt. None of the leaders who replaced him are elected, unless gangs armed with Molotov cocktails count as a valid electorate. Finally, it is far from clear that a majority of the Ukrainian people (in particular, the Russian-speaking Eastern provinces) have accepted the outcome. Putting aside Crimea, tensions continue to simmer in Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkiv and even Odessa.
While some of this unrest is clearly orchestrated from Moscow, one cannot seriously deny that millions of Ukrainians also oppose the new Kiev leadership – the same millions who elected Yanukovych in 2010 – and that the country remains on the brink of a civil war. This helps support the Kremlin’s theory that Ukraine has ceased functioning as a coherent state (or, to the extent it is still functioning, has been taken over in an armed putsch), and that therefore any notions of Ukrainian territorial integrity are simply irrelevant in the context of a country in free-fall.
Upon closer examination, that theory does not hold water very well. Ukraine is surely in dire straits, but has not yet fallen apart. Ukrainian institutions, including the police and the armed forces, continue to function. Pro-Russian protests have not managed to match the fury of Maidan or to wrest power from Kiev’s appointees at the local level. Indeed, the Ukrainian sailors’ stubborn refusal to abandon their ships in Crimean harbors and surrender to their Russian “brothers” spoke volumes of their continuing allegiance to a Ukrainian nation. It’s too early to tell for sure, and sectarian passions could always take an ugly turn, but so far it appears that Russian intervention may have bonded many Ukrainians (including many Russian-speaking ones) closer together as one nation in this critical hour, instead of splitting them apart. This may be the opposite of what the Kremlin expected.
Moscow’s claim that Kiev has been seized by a “fascist junta” supported from the West is likewise overblown. But it, too, has a grain of truth to it. The West egged on the rebels, and was giddy with their success. Although the authorities in Kiev claim to represent a democratic revolution, they have installed dubious oligarchs as new governors in the Eastern provinces, have pushed to repeal laws protective of the Russian-speaking minority, and are now moving to shut off Russian TV channels. (None of this will help them retain the commitment of the country’s sizable Russian-speaking minority.) Questions have been raised, even in the West, about who really stood behind the snipers mowing people down in February. Finally, it does not help that some of Kiev’s new rulers are affiliated with far-right organizations.
In short, the Western public’s view of the Maidan rebellion as a battle of the Jedi knights against Senator Palpatine is simplistic. The real picture is not so black and white; it’s shades of grey.
Does any of this justify Russian intervention in Crimea? Of course not. There was no discernible threat to existing Russian military installations on the peninsula that could not have been easily repelled by existing Russian troops that were already there. Nor was there any hint of an imminent bloodbath between Crimea’s Russian majority and supporters of the new Kiev government. Had there been a bloodbath, the Russian army surely would have been quick to respond — and far more justified in doing so. But for some reason, Putin did not wait for a bloodbath to start – probably because he sensed that none was coming. Because the Ukrainians were smart enough not to be easily provoked. They wanted to make it difficult for him, and so far have largely succeeded.
But then again, it’s not really about Crimea or protecting the Russian-speaking population. And legal or moral arguments, while they are useful fodder for the Russian and Western masses and for the media that caters to their indoctrination, frankly are just silly distractions when great powers and their geopolitical interests are involved. The United States has never felt constrained by international law when an invasion of a sovereign country, be it Grenada, Panama, Yugoslavia or Iraq, seemed to suit its national interests. So, whether Putin is morally or legally justified in what he has done is another interesting question that is irrelevant to solving the crisis now at hand. He is acting because he feels compelled to do so. To solve the current crisis, we need to cool the rhetoric and understand why Russian tanks are rolling in Crimea – and will likely soon roll elsewhere in Ukraine – and what it would take to make them stop.
3. Why Invade? Putin’s Risks vs. Benefits Calculation.
The potential benefits of invasion to the Kremlin are clear, and are rooted in fear: Putin’s self-preservation concerns and the general Russian fear of NATO outlined above. The Kremlin seeks to reduce the threat to its own rule, and to Russia’s survival as a great power, by reversing what it views as unexpected and unacceptable Western gains in a region that has always historically been in Russia’s orbit. Simply put, Putin is not prepared to tolerate a large hostile state, allied with the West, on Russia’s Western border – an existential threat that no Kremlin regime has had to deal with since 1944.
These objectives are not met by merely occupying Crimea. Stopping there leaves the rebels in charge of Kiev and a huge land border between Russia and Ukraine that now needs to be defended. Most likely, Putin’s preferred endgame is not just grabbing Crimea (which was simply easiest to grab, and hence came first), but a full-scale land invasion of Ukraine designed to either unseat the new government entirely or to force it to negotiate a peace favorable to Russia when Ukraine is on the brink of humiliating defeat. At a minimum, this war would probably result in a split Ukraine.
Furthermore, by invading Crimea so soon after the rebellion, Putin has demonstrated that he is inclined to act quickly, before the Kiev government has had a chance to consolidate its hold on power or to repair the Ukrainian economy. With each passing day that the rebellion survives, it may acquire more legitimacy – unless and until the Ukrainian economy collapses, which remains a strong possibility. The more patient play for Putin might have been to sit back, turn down the gas supplies, support a pro-Russian insurgency in the East, and hope for the Ukrainian economy to disintegrate and for internal Ukrainian tempers to flare. Internal strife in Ukraine would erode support for the new leadership in Kiev, provide a more legitimate cover for an invasion, and may even push some Ukrainians back towards the Russian bear hug. He could always invade two years later if this strategy didn’t work. But he must have decided that time is of the essence, while the Ukrainian army is still a basketcase, and that a Ukrainian collapse without direct Russian “assistance” is unlikely.
Why not then invade immediately across the board, and not just in Crimea? First, as in 2004, it’s possible he was caught a bit flat-footed by the speed of Yanukovych’s collapse and did not expect the Russian army to have to get involved. Invading a country larger than France takes more than a week to stage. Troops must be gathered and supplies must be arranged.
More importantly, rolling the dice with a full-blown land war has many downsides. The risks of all-out invasion must weigh heavily on the internal debates at the Kremlin right now, as Putin’s inner circle grapples with whether, and when, to pull the trigger on Phase 2.
There will be severe casualties. Putin personally might not care, but too many zinc coffins would erode public support in Russia for the war. The Ukrainian army, while smaller and poorer than the Russian army, will resist. They might also get Western aid quickly through Poland.
The Ukrainian people will resist as well, and have waged tenacious guerilla campaigns against Moscow’s rule in the past. This will make the Russian army’s advance, and their hold over conquered territories, increasingly difficult as they pass the Russian-dominated areas of Eastern Ukraine and approach the Dnieper River.
Will the Russian air force pound Ukrainian cities in an attempt to suppress urban combat? Will they use tactical nukes if the war isn’t going well? Why not. In for a penny, in for a pound. But there will be a horrible public relations cost to such measures, including again inside Russia itself. By contrast, waiting patiently while simmering Russian resentment of the Maidan rebellion with a well-orchestrated TV campaign showing gory images of “Ukrainian chaos” gives Putin an upper hand in the internal PR war and builds Russian popular support for an invasion some time later down the road.
Will every Russian soldier obey orders? Or will a new General Vlasov emerge, and address fellow Russian soldiers in YouTube clips? If the Ukrainians provide the opportunity, some Russians may defect. Paradoxically, invading Ukraine to prevent a Russian rebellion may produce the opposite effect: giving birth to a Russian rebel army.
Finally, the economic costs of the new Cold War could be staggering for Russia, and are already being felt by the Russian elites. It’s not yet clear how strong the Western sanctions will be, but they are bound to get stronger if Putin goes ahead with Phase 2. Given Europe’s addiction to Russian gas, an economic war would be a double-edged sword for the West and could disrupt Europe’s fledgling recovery from the Great Recession. Behind the scenes, Western banks must be lobbying for a light touch, since they love laundering dirty Russian cash. But ultimately, Russia stands to lose more from a return to Soviet autarchy than the West does.
Putting aside sanctions, a big war needs to get paid for. Where will Putin get the money to pay for bullets, coffins and widows? Even before Maidan, the Russian budget was projected to run at a slight deficit due to dropping oil prices. As Americans surely know, deficits can be ignored as long as your government can keep borrowing from new suckers. But after Crimea, Russia can kiss the global credit markets goodbye. This leaves the oligarchs – who do have enormous resources at their disposal – as the ones most likely to be asked to pony up. Until now, they had enjoyed a low federal income tax rate, as well as the ability to stash their profits offshore, as ransom for supporting the regime. That gravy train may have to end. This won’t buy Putin any love in Moscow’s caviar lounges.
In sum, Phase 2 could spell disaster for Putin on many fronts.
But he may still opt to go for it, figuring that the risk of inaction – and possibly facilitating his own downfall – is greater than all the downsides mentioned above. Better to fight the NATO bogeyman on Ukrainian soil than face him in Smolensk, he may say. Even in an impoverished wartime Russia, he may manage to remain in power for many more years, regardless of the ultimate cost to his nation. Even if it means turning Russia into North Korea.
Let’s eat one meal a day! Hooray! And if I dare say anything blasphemous about our Dear Leader Kim, let my tongue shrivel away!
On that note, there’s one other potential “upside” of the new Cold War from Putin’s perspective. It would provide perfect cover for a crackdown on dissent at home.
4. Tightening the Screws At Home.
Until now, the Western public’s perception of Putin’s regime as a dictatorship has been overblown. While the regime was certainly repressive, it was much softer than the Soviet days in three key respects.
First, dissent was persecuted but not punished in Stalinist fashion. While a couple of Pussy Riot members went to jail, they didn’t serve even two years before being released. In Stalin’s days, they would have gotten 25 years or a bullet. In Brezhnev’s days, 15 years or confinement for life in a psychiatric ward.
Second, alternative versions of the truth remain accessible to the citizens. While the government, directly or through corporations affiliated with it, controls virtually all TV channels, there are still independent newspapers, websites and radio channels. (This may be changing for the worse right as this essay is being written, as reports emerge of opposition websites being shut down.) Unlike China, so far Russia has not attempted to block unfavorable Western content on the Internet. By contrast, in the Soviet days, the government had a stranglehold on all media sources, Western radio broadcasts were jammed, and mere possession of a Western newspaper or a copier could be grounds for imprisonment.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, the Soviet regime was effective at intimidating dissent by prohibiting the vast majority of its citizens from leaving the country. The Berlin Wall and the thousands of miles of barbed wire and minefields surrounding the Soviet border were not designed to keep Western spies out, but to keep disgruntled citizens in. Today, Russians are generally free to leave if they can find a place to go.
Believe it or not, Russia is a more free country today than it was 25 years ago. Its people are also jaded about their government, having seen several generations of false prophets come and go in the last three decades. This makes Putin’s job of governing, and rallying the masses for a big new war, much more difficult.
However, wartime also presents an opportunity to clamp down on freedom in any society. Even Lincoln did so, suspending the writ of habeas corpus during the American Civil War, while FDR sent Japanese-Americans to concentration camps during World War II. A confrontation with a rebellious Ukraine, and the NATO bogeyman standing behind it, could finally untie Putin’s hands to deal ruthlessly with the shrinking ghetto of his opponents. And he will have plenty of willing helpers. The images of Ukrainian policemen being pelted with bricks and Molotov cocktails, then being gunned down, by Maidan activists must have resonated with Moscow’s OMON forces. When Putin asks them to shoot protesters in Russia, they are likely to obey.
But does Putin want to be remembered as the man who revived Stalinism?
It is quite possible that Putin started out with decent intentions: to build a modern and somewhat democratic Russia, albeit of course with himself as the perennial leader in the Kremlin. But, as challenges mounted, he resorted to old KGB methods because it’s the only game he plays well. He now sees himself at a crossroads. One choice is to stand and fight the West on Ukrainian soil, which may strengthen his rule in the short run but could also turn out to be a bet-the-house failure. The other is to let Ukraine go, as he prudently did in 2004, and risk that the Maidan contagion will spread to Russian soil. To maintain his grip on his home base in that case, he will have to offer his citizens something better than what EU is now offering to Ukraine.
There is a middle ground, which might stave off Russia’s slide into Stalinism and allow Putin to back off gracefully, having scored massive points at home by standing up to the West and still feeling like a winner. But it would require cooperation and compromise from the West. And the West, having backed Putin into a corner, may not be interested in letting him off the hook easily.
5. What Are the West’s Fears and Motivations? The View from the East.
I don’t have deep insights into what motivates the West. Sometimes I wonder if the West itself knows what motivates it. But I can venture a guess about what Russians perceive the West’s thinking to be.
To the Russian leadership, the West’s decision-making may seem just as opaque and byzantine as the Kremlin’s does to the West. The first obstacle in attempting to scrutinize Western policy is that there is no single actor or entity that embodies the West, whereas it’s pretty safe to say that Putin and his close circle of advisors have the authority to speak for Russia today. Sure, there are Obama, Merkel and company. But did any of them personally decide that supporting a Ukrainian revolt is a good thing, and then authorize all steps necessary to instigate and sustain that revolt? We may never know. More likely, they were taken aback by the events in Kiev, did not need this crisis any more than Putin did, and are now panicking and scrambling to react, just like Putin.
On the other hand, even though the West may not always be well-organized and does not have an omnipotent puppet master in charge, one can see certain consistent patterns in Western behavior spanning several decades and multiple political administrations (Kosovo, NATO expansion, opposition to a Russian “sphere of influence” and support for Saakashvili and the Maidan rebels) that indicate the existence of a predominantly anti-Russian view in Western policy-making circles. It does not matter whether Obama or Merkel personally subscribes to some or all of this view. What matters to the Russians, as well as the rest of the world, is that this view seems to represent the consensus of Western actors in positions of power or influence – be it NATO, the Bundestag, the U.S. Department of State, CNN, or a Polish think tank – and plays a significant role in their collective policy decisions. Accordingly, in any crisis, the Russian leadership is likely to assume that this view is driving Western policy.
At the lowest common denominator level, ordinary Western people also dislike Russia, inspired by what they see on TV and read in their high school textbooks. I witnessed this first-hand during the 1998 Winter Olympics, when Russia was playing the Czech Republic in the gold medal hockey game. An American crowd in a New York bar cheered wildly when the Czechs scored the only goal of the game. I doubt most of this crowd knew what the Czech Republic is, or could find it on a map. They only cared that Russia lost. Russia in 1998 was a bankrupt mess under Yeltsin, had been defeated in Chechnya and posed no threat to anyone in the West. But people in SoHo (hardly redneck territory, but still American) cared enough about Russia to hate it.
The Western media contributes fuel to the fire. In the run-up to the Sochi Olympics, the Western news centered on backed-up toilets, threats of terrorism and stray dogs, rather than the impressive feat of engineering that Sochi represented. (After it was all over, there were hardly any congratulatory Western stories about the fact that no terrorist acts occurred.) All these were deeply offensive to the Russian people. Can you name a positive Russian character in any recent American movie?
In sum, in analyzing what motivates the West, the Russians assume (correctly, I believe) that antagonism towards Russia is a fundamental baseline that frames the discussion among Western power brokers. This antagonism did not end with the Cold War, and is unlikely to dissipate regardless of who is in charge in the Kremlin. It is based on what Russia represents as a country, rather than Russia’s leadership. Simply put, the West sees Russia as a dangerously large competitor, un-Western in its values and morals, that is uniquely capable of challenging and disrupting the West’s military and economic hegemony. That view, honed by mainstream Western thinkers over many centuries, is the only logical explanation for Western behavior towards Russia in the last quarter-century since the end of the Cold War.
That behavior can be summed up by the following trends:
- Relentless expansion of American and NATO power wherever possible. Recently, American troops have tended to stay in most of the countries they invade, or at least try to leave behind a puppet government when they withdraw. A reverse Brezhnev doctrine?
- Continuing encouragement of former Eastern Bloc countries, be it Poland or Estonia, to join the Western military and economic institutions. Would the West really care about Estonia if it were an African nation? However, as an additional counterweight to Russia, conveniently located a mere two-hour drive from St. Petersburg, it matters a lot.
- Opposition to any Russian attempt to regain influence in former Eastern Bloc countries. Query why the West cannot tolerate Ukraine “falling under Russian control” again, when frankly Ukraine had already been under Russian control for centuries previously? The answer is not because the West cares deeply about Ukrainian people, but rather because the absence of Russian control over Ukrainian territory and resources makes Russia weaker.
A weak Russia (or better yet, Russia broken up into pieces) appears to be the West’s desired outcome that would minimize the threat that Russia represents. Whether that is really the optimal outcome for the West is debatable. (If China annexed Siberia, should Washington celebrate? Think about it.) But the Western policy makers have seemingly settled on this course. Can you name any Western policies in recent memory that were designed to make Russia stronger?
Viewed through this lens, the West’s behavior has a consistent logic to it. Encourage rebellion against the Kremlin’s ally in Kiev. Offer support to the new government as soon as it’s in place, regardless of its shaky legitimacy. Refuse to acknowledge any Russian-inspired resistance to the new government. Resist Russian military takeover of Ukrainian territory. Make Russia weaker, and add another country to the West’s “win” column. Keep marching East.
This is what’s truly at stake in Ukraine for Putin today, and why – on the flip side — Putin must be terrified, and felt he had to act. In November, he had Ukraine in his pocket, as had generations of Soviet leaders before him. Now, suddenly Ukraine has slipped out of his pocket and is heading in the West’s direction. Put differently, the West has now marched up to his home’s doorstep. Allowing this result to stand, in his view, leaves Russia weaker and leaves the West stronger. That’s a double whammy he refuses to accept. Crimea is simply his first step in trying to undo this sudden reversal of Russian fortunes.
Let’s put aside the inspiring rhetoric about democracy, human rights, self-determination and territorial sovereignty. It’s mostly hypocrisy, and is certainly not the driving force behind the actions of the West’s ruling elite. The West has often tolerated rampant abuses of all these principles when doing so suited its geopolitical interests: Egyptian troops overthrowing another popularly elected President and gunning down protesters, American interrogators waterboarding Iraqi prisoners, and Saudi troops invading Bahrain to put down a Shiite protest movement. Do you recall anyone imposing sanctions on Saudi Arabia in 2011 when that happened?
The real reasons why the West is so keenly interested in the Ukrainian crisis are because it’s next door to Russia, because in this case the Russians are the invader, and because helping a rebellious Ukraine survive would advance the Western ball deeper into Slavic territory. Also, abandoning Ukraine may undermine Western influence in other Russia-neighboring countries that had been promised Western protection or had been considering a switch to the Western side.
Assuming this is what really drives the Western powers that be, how should they proceed in Ukraine?
6. What Should the West Do?
First, let’s take note of the asymmetry of stakes for both sides. As mentioned above, for Putin this crisis is arguably a matter of survival. Ukraine’s flip from the ally column to the enemy column is a huge blow to the security of his regime. For the West, it’s merely a matter of keeping up the Eastern offensive against Putin — and to some degree reassuring that their prior gains won in that offensive are not likely to be reversed. But for the West, Ukraine is not a must-have. After all, the West managed to get by without Ukraine somehow for the last few centuries. If the Western offensive stalls, life goes on. The West has already won several hands against Russia and was betting on Ukraine with the house money.
This suggests that Putin has more to lose, compared to the West, and will not be the one to blink first. Not surprisingly, the Western leaders have uniformly signaled that they do not plan to challenge Putin’s actions militarily. Although most Americans would agree that Russians are bad guys, they also don’t feel a strong kinship with Ukrainians. After Iraq, it would be hard to sell the American public on a war that may feature massive American casualties for the sake of saving Lviv from returning to the Russian empire.
However, the West may well attempt to fight a proxy war against Russia as long as someone else (Ukrainians, perhaps along with some eager Polish and Lithuanian volunteers) is doing the fighting and the dying. Western arms manufacturers could do brisk business supplying the Ukrainian side, and the West seemingly has little to lose from a protracted Russo-Ukrainian war unless Putin ups the ante and bombs Warsaw. And even then, let’s face it, Warsaw is not as crucial to the West as Munich or London.
There is one basic problem with this scenario. It means Ukraine becomes a fiery wreck like Syria, with millions of its refugees swarming Eastern Europe and Russia, while those who stay behind are decimated by starvation, the collapse of civic infrastructure, and Russian bombings. The West might not care much about the human costs, but a complete Ukrainian meltdown would also mean a strategic defeat for the West. By making Ukraine cease to exist as a state and transforming it into a devastated battleground, Putin would win. The new potential large ally that the West thought it had acquired in the Maidan rebellion would simply disappear as a relevant player from the global chessboard.
Thus, throwing more fuel on the fire could work counter to the West’s interests. A more prudent course of action is to step back, try to defuse tensions and avoid giving Putin any pretext for invading the rest of Ukraine. And even if he invades, push the new Kiev leadership to quickly reach a peace settlement with Russia that, no matter how onerous — even if it involves acknowledging Crimea’s secession — preserves at least some chunk of Ukraine intact and free of Russian troops. A Compiègne Forest armistice on the Dnieper would be a victory for the West – and for Ukrainian people — in the long run: half of an independent Ukraine is better than a Ukraine completely conquered by Russia. (For the same reason, it is far from clear that Putin would ultimately settle for the former.) Of course, the West’s public posture would remain that of utter indignation and sanctions for Russia.
Sanctions will inflict heavy damage on the Russian economy, but won’t stop Putin, just like they haven’t stopped Iran or North Korea. And they will also hurt the Western economies. It remains to be seen who will lose power first – Putin or the current generation of Western leaders. The Russian people may accept a 2% decline in GDP more easily than some Western Europeans.
Likewise, exclusion from the G8 and other Western institutions has been laughed off in Moscow. Russians have always rightly considered themselves outsiders in the Western country club anyway.
Indeed, the harder the West pushes back against Putin’s counter-attack, the more the ordinary Russian people are likely to rally around Putin (unless he suffers a series of spectacular setbacks) and the less he may feel he has to lose by pressing further ahead. His approval ratings soared above 70% after Crimea voted to secede.
The other approval rating that he cares about – that of Russia’s oligarchs – is less easy to measure, and that’s the constituency the West hopes to influence the most through economic sanctions. But ultimately the support of Russia’s upper class is not as crucial to Putin’s survival as the support of Russia’s military and security institutions, which he firmly controls and which the West would have a hard time influencing. The Russian generals are well cared for and, if not for this new Cold War and Putin’s focus on rebuilding the military, many of them might be looking for a new job. Of course, increasing reliance on men with guns would also mean a more repressive state. Bad for Russian dissidents, but also bad for the West – because, in the short run, it will make Putin even harder to overthrow.
In sum, a Western confrontational posture is not likely to remove Putin from power and increases the risk that Ukraine’s independence will vanish entirely. On the other hand, a policy of Western engagement might be more productive. The only way the West can expand its influence further East, and one day hope to see a more friendly government in Moscow, is by treating the Russian people as a partner, not as an adversary.
7. Towards a Grand Bargain?
What would be the roadmap of a Russia-West-Ukraine tripartite agreement that could defuse the situation and pull everyone back from the brink? I would sum it up in one word: Finland. After clashing with the Soviet Union bitterly and losing some territory to it in the 1940’s, the Finns made peace with the bear and quietly built a prosperous independent country in the bear’s shadow. The “price” they had to pay was maintaining a small army and adopting a very subtle profile on the global stage. Does that sound so terrible?
From Russia’s perspective, the following elements would need to be present:
- Ukraine is forbidden from ever joining NATO or any other military alliance that excludes Russia, or hosting any foreign troops. If it is to remain independent, Ukraine must be a neutral country with a small army.
- Russia will retain forever its pre-existing military bases in Crimea, regardless of which country Crimea belongs to.
- While they don’t need to recognize Crimean secession, Ukraine and the West agree not to use force to try to recover Crimea.
- An immediate return of Crimea to Ukraine, given the nature of the current government in Kiev, is out of the question. Further down the road, say in five years, a second referendum (fairly conducted and observed by international monitors, with “rejoining Ukraine” being one of the choices on the ballot) can be discussed.
- Ukraine agrees not to discriminate against the Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine.
From Ukraine’s perspective, some of these are painful sacrifices, although frankly the first two simply represent an affirmation of a status quo that has always existed. From the West’s perspective, it means conceding the reality that NATO’s march East has run into a dead end and cannot go any further.
What should Ukraine, and the West, request in return that Putin might be willing to give?
- Russia recognizes Ukraine’s new government as legitimate.
- Russia pledges not to invade Ukraine or otherwise use its military force against Ukraine. (Here, Russia would insist on some carve-out for extraordinary events such as genocide or mass deportations of Russian speakers, or Ukraine developing nuclear weapons.) Otherwise, the deal is off – including the no-NATO part.
- Ukraine has a right to join the EU and does not have to join Putin’s “customs union.”
- Russia provides Ukraine with a massive economic aid package similar to what Putin offered to Yanukovych last year.
This deal would require sacrifices on each side. Its most objectionable feature for Ukraine and the West is its implicit blessing of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, at least in the short run. But even without a deal, Crimea is currently lost for them anyway.
Giving up the prospects of NATO membership may also be criticized by hawkish types, but is the only pragmatic solution. It merely recognizes the fact that NATO’s bluff has finally been called and no Russian government would ever allow Ukraine to join NATO anyway. An insecure Russia is worse for the world at large than an insecure Ukraine. This would also send a strong positive signal to the Russian people: no, the NATO bogeyman is not marching East to get you.
Why should Putin accept this deal? After all, Western promises to Russia have been repeatedly broken. Flashbacks to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the withdrawal of Russian troops from East Germany beckon. (As does the UN resolution authorizing a no-fly zone in Libya, whose mission later morphed into regime change, or the Western-brokered shared governance deal that Yanukovych signed the day before his ouster.) But here, Ukraine would be a co-signatory and would have a powerful incentive to comply: if Ukraine ever changes its mind, Russian tanks and nukes will be ready. And we all know the West will not send its own soldiers to die for Ukraine.
Why should the West accept this deal? Because it preserves an independent Ukraine and millions of Ukrainian lives. A Finlandized Ukraine is still better for the West than Ukraine as a Russian colony, or Ukraine in flames. It avoids another Russian military victory that would be embarrassing for Western leaders. It avoids a further escalation of economic war that would harm the global economy and may throw some Western leaders out of power. Finally, it dials down the new Cold War with Russia that the West may not be able to afford, with the U.S. dancing on the edge of a Treasury debt default and an inevitable costly confrontation with China looming on the horizon.
Finally, the Ukrainian people (if not the government in Kiev) should welcome this deal. They just want to live a free life, and do not want to be pawns on anyone’s chessboard. Life in Finland is much better than life in Ukraine. And just like the Finns have moved on and are not mourning the loss of Vyborg these days, so too most Ukrainians will ultimately turn the page on Crimea — whose pedigree as a Ukrainian territory was questionable, to put it mildly. Time will tell whether the Crimeans themselves accept their new home. It will be their decision to make, one day, when Putin is no longer in charge.
Because one day Putin will be gone, and Russia will be a truly democratic and prosperous country. I might not live to see that day, but hopefully our children will enjoy seeing it. And this Russia will be Ukraine’s closest friend.
8. What Will Happen Next?
Although the grand bargain proposed above makes sense, it won’t happen. Both sides are too dug in, and there is too much mistrust and ill will in the air — not an environment conducive to reaching such a deal.
Dark days are ahead. Russian troops will eventually invade the rest of Ukraine. An all-out assault may be preceded by a guerilla war waged inside Ukraine by pro-Russian militias, with some help from Spetsnaz operatives, to destabilize the country. It may take a month or a year, but the final assault becomes increasingly likely if both sides maintain their current hostile and uncompromising postures. There is some chance that Putin will do it before Ukraine’s May 25 presidential elections, especially if it looks like the wrong person (in his view) is about to win.
The West’s best bet in that case would be a quick truce and preservation of some independent chunk of Ukrainian territory in the West of the country, but it’s unclear if the Western leaders have the foresight to acknowledge this or that Putin would be satisfied with anything but a united Ukraine controlled by forces friendly to Russia.
The next sequel of this post-Soviet drama may take place, in a few years, in Kazakhstan. For now, the shrewd 73-year old Nazarbayev remains firmly in charge and Muslim fundamentalism has not yet reared its head. But as we have seen with Yanukovych, power can evaporate quickly. There are millions of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan, most of whom live in the North of the country. How would Putin react to a Muslim revolt in Almaty, if the new rebellious government includes people with ties to the Chechen rebels or Al Qaeda? And whose side will the West (and China, which happens to be next door to Kazakhstan) choose this time? Being half Kazakh myself, I hope I never have to find out.
