You cannot divest a country of its empire, political system and raison d’etre, its industry, jobs, money, prestige and world stature in five or six short years as happened in the 1990s and not expect an unpleasant rebound: a Stalin-lite regime. Today’s President Putin and his Russia are at least partly the West’s creation.
It was a missed opportunity in the mid-1990s not to have drawn Russia into (the then) burgeoning western fold and invited it to join Nato. Now we must deal with Putin as he is.
To the West, Russia illegally annexed Crimea and tried to do the same to East Ukraine. But seen from Russia, the West had recklessly ignored understandings about Ukraine’s neutrality by trying to bring it into Nato and the European Union.
Nato is already as close to the Russian motherland as the German army in World War II. Things look very different sitting in Moscow. The West seems like the aggressor. To say all this is not to condone Putin’s behaviour, but to explain it.
As president and prime minister of Russia, Putin has ruled it for 16 years. If he secures another presidential term – and given the ruthless way he is removing potential rivals this seems highly likely – he will have led Russia for almost a quarter of a century. His supporters say that he has brought stability after the chaotic tenure of Boris Yeltsin and that he has restored national pride.
The actual record is both more sobering and more depressingly dangerous. The country is chronically mismanaged. Its economy is faltering. Its commitment to the rule of law is a mockery.
During Putin’s era, Russian forces have laid waste to Chechnya, marched into Georgia, destabilised Ukraine, annexed Crimea and committed war crimes in Syria. Putin has presided over a military build-up and used Syria to test his weaponry on undefended civilians and unarmed rebels in a gruesome re-enactment of the horrors of Guernica.
But relations between the United States and Russia could be at a turning point following the election of the deal-making President Trump to the White House, who speaks of seeking a rapprochement with Russia. Senior Russian officials hailed Putin’s first conversation with Trump a fortnight ago as evidence of rapidly warming ties between Moscow and Washington, with Nato and its Allies the likely losers.
This possible initiative by Trump was engulfed in controversy following compelling intelligence of Russian interference in the US elections and reports of ill-judged contacts with Russia immediately after the imposition of further sanctions by President Barack Obama that led to the resignation of his Russophile national security adviser, the cack-handed General Mike Flynn.
Trump had also pledged “partner-like cooperation” on the three-year-old conflict in the Ukraine, despite the US and European countries having imposed economic sanctions on Russia in 2014 over its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and its backing for pro-Russian separatist forces in the east. A return to cooperation with Russia on a conflict which has so far killed over 10,000 people would represent a remarkable U-turn in US foreign policy.
Putin’s menacing behaviour has made Nato shed its illusions about partnership with Russia. It has drawn up plans for the defence of the frontline states in the Baltics
The security conference held in Munich last week brought greater clarity to the US’s continuing commitment to Nato. US Defence Secretary General “Mad Dog” Mathis, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, insisted that the US remained fundamentally committed to European security: “American security is permanently tied to the security of Europe. Transatlantic unity buttresses European unity, a fact we recognise in the context of cooperation between Nato and the European Union.”
In the face of Trump’s loose rhetoric on Russia, the “grown-ups” in his top security and foreign relations team were able to reassure a nervous Europe that the US remained committed to Nato. But they were unable to undo the havoc caused by Trump’s careless talk about the EU – failing notably to reassert US support for the European Union as a pillar of the western political order. The end of Europe’s Pax Americana hung heavily in the air at Munich.
Deep suspicion about the US administration persists with the German foreign minister joining Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the Commission, in resisting the US’s call for at least two per cent expenditure of national income on defence as had been agreed by all Nato countries two years ago.
Russia has to be deterred from further military antics in Europe. Its intervention in eastern Ukraine has contributed to a more general destabilisation of the borderlands of the European Union. Putin’s menacing behaviour has made Nato shed its illusions about partnership with Russia. It has drawn up plans for the defence of the frontline states in the Baltics. The seriousness of the Russian threat to Europe is not only militarily, but also through subversion.
The admission of Montenegro to Nato later this year could prompt Russia again to test the alliance’s readiness and politico-military will to stand together. It remains to be seen whether Trump’s and Putin’s vow to “work together with the aim of destroying Islamic State and other terrorist groups in Syria” will be pursued. Whatever the outcome of that approach, Islamic State activities need to be tracked and repelled not just by domestic counter-terrorist forces but also by Nato.
Nato must develop integrated strategies for future conflicts. As the Arctic becomes more navigable, Moscow’s attention will shift northwards. Putin expects the northern sea route through retreating ice to gain the economic and military-strategic significance of the Suez Canal. Russia is already trying to assert legal authority over the waterways and its military presence is growing there making it another potential Nato flashpoint.
The first requirement for a re-setting of US-European-Russian relations is the reassertion of western power. Putin will only be brought to the negotiating table from a position of strength. That means higher defence spending by Europe and distributing the financial burden more evenly with the US. Plainly, Europe not only has to dig deeper in its pockets, but also play a more concerted role in rethinking how to defend the West. The European Union’s reluctance to acknowledge this need could lead to a maverick in the White House acting irrationally.
Budgets must be intelligently allocated with an eye towards evolving 21st century warfare. Future battlefields will be in the realm of cyberwarfare, rather than on the north German plains. The West’s advantage over big-spending Russia, over terror cells and Jihadi insurgents, is its technological edge.
It is clearly in the interests of world stability and peace that the West has better relations with Russia. But the US and Europe must speak with one voice. Putin would be delighted if Trump gave him a freer hand in Russia’s “near abroad”, for example by scrapping the US’s anti-missile defences in Europe and halting Nato’s enlargement with the membership of Montenegro. But these would be huge and premature concessions.
Congressional Republican leaders and his more sensible security advisers – Secretary of State Tillerson and Defence Secretary Mathis – should strive to convince Trump that his search for a “grand bargain” with Putin is currently delusory. No matter how great a negotiator Trump is – a talent still to be demonstrated in the diplomatic field – no good deal is likely to be obtained. The risk is that thin-skinned Trump, double-crossed, will end up falling out with Putin with possibly irreparable consequences.