Posts published in “Defense and Foreign Policy”

Defeat and discredit Putin so that a new Russian leader and a new Russian leadership class can emerge.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine had barely begun when the councils of caution warned that we must tread carefully and give Putin an “off-ramp” or a way that might allow him to “back down while retaining some semblance of face.”

It sounds so reasonable and so judicious—especially after Putin intimated that he might be prepared to use nuclear weapons. But in fact, this is exactly the wrong approach.

Giving Putin an “off-ramp” and allowing him to “save face” will allow him to retain power in Russia. It will inspire and motivate like-minded Russian politicians who wish to inherit his mantle of political authoritarianism, military imperialism, personal plunder, and misrule.

It will mean that Putin will live, politically, to fight another day and to continue menacing Europe, America, and the West.

Thus the only wise and acceptable course of action is to defeat and discredit Putin: so that he is replaced by a new Russian leader who respects international norms, international law, and the territorial sovereignty of free and independent states.

The Russian Elite. This is achievable. Russia, after all, is not Iraq or Afghanistan. Despite its myriad problems, Russia has a well-educated elite that can assume the reins of political power and exercise political authority.

But this will not happen, and it cannot happen, unless and until Putin is defeated and thoroughly discredited in the eyes of his countrymen, especially the Russian elite.

As we have noted, Putin serves at the pleasure of a rich and cosseted Russian mafia oligarchy. If and when this oligarchy finds that Putin is bad for business, it will force him from power.

But that won’t happen if we insist on creating a safe space for Vladimir and a zone of comfort in which he can “save face.”

As for Putin’s brandishing of nuclear weapons, perspective is needed.

First, nuclear saber rattling is nothing new for the Russians. During the Cold War, the Soviets often intimated that they might use nukes, or that a nuclear conflagration might result should America and the West not accede to their demands. So take their latest threat with a big grain of salt.

Second, as Russia’s poor military performance in Ukraine thus far is amply demonstrating, the Russian military is subpar.

Their conventional military units are formidable on paper, but surprisingly weak in battle. Nuclear weapons and cyber warfare capabilities are about all the Russians have to intimidate and frighten the West. So of course they play that card diplomatically and in communications designed for public consumption.

But in truth, as Alexander S. Vindman points out:

Despite Putin’s bluster, the rules of great-power competition and confrontation have not changed since the beginning of the Cold War. But we have forgotten how to confront a belligerent, saber-rattling Russia.

A previous generation of policymakers would have managed tensions while standing up to intimidation and calling out incendiary rhetoric. In truth, Russian leaders have no interest in a nuclear war or a bilateral conventional conflict that they would certainly lose.

The West has far more room to maneuver than it appears to grasp.

In other words: nuclear saber-rattling by Putin is a reflection of Russian weakness, not Russian strength.

The bottom line: America and Europe need a new Russian leader and a new type of Russian leadership. We need Russian leaders who, at a minimum, respect international norms, international law, and the territorial sovereignty of other states.

But this objective never will be achieved if we insist on accepting Putin’s misrule as inevitable and as something that we must recognize and accommodate.

“Off-ramps” and “face-saving measures” for Putin are inimical to achieving the West’s desired end state: a Russia free of Putin and Putinism.

Feature photo credit: Associated Press photo of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin (L) and jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny (R) courtesy of Sky News.

Prominent commentators on both the Left and the Right have created a false narrative that blames America and NATO, at least in part, for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They’re wrong.

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has been nothing but transparent about his objectives in Ukraine and Eastern Europe—what he seeks and why he seeks it. Frighteningly, Putin seeks the dissolution of Ukraine and other sovereign countries and their incorporation into a more expansive Russian empire.

Yet, prominent commentators—including, for instance, the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman and National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty—insist on ignoring, or at least downplaying, what Putin actually says, so that they can blame America and the West, at least in part, for Russian imperialism.

NATO Expansion. Their main charge is that by expanding NATO eastward after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States and Western Europe threatened legitimate Russian security interests and thereby “inflame[d] the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russia…”

That last quote is from George Kennan in 1997, and both Friedman and Dougherty cite Kennan as prophetic. “The mystery,” writes Friedman, “was why the U.S. …would choose to quickly push NATO into Russia’s face when it was weak.”

Because of NATO expansion, writes Dougherty, Putin’s attack on Ukraine was “not just predictable, but predicted… Putin, [consequently], has shifted his strategy of trying to deter NATO and Ukraine to one of compulsion.”

George Kennan. Kennan, of course, is the American diplomat who wisely and brilliantly devised the Western strategy of containment at the onset of the Cold War. But while he is rightly credited for that achievement, he was not infallible.

Anne Applebaum points out that “Kennan was wrong about a lot of things… [He] was somebody who saw the world through Russian eyes,” not the eyes of Europeans threatened by Soviet communism and Russian imperialism.

Thus even at the onset of the Cold War, in 1948, as the Soviets were installing puppet governments in Eastern Europe and threatening Western Europe, Kennan opposed the creation of NATO.

“He believed its creation would solidify the [European] continent’s division and put an end to the possibility of reunifying Germany and Europe,” explains Christopher Layne in a 2012 piece in the The National Interest.

Russian Aggression. In truth, as Applebaum observes, and as is plainly obvious, NATO expansion decades later was not the cause of Russian aggression.

Instead, Russian aggression precipitated an intense desire by the East Europeans to join NATO—just as it had precipitated a desire by the West Europeans to create NATO in the first place back in the late 1940s after World War II.

The East Europeans, like the West Europeans decades earlier, feared Russia, and for good reason. Thus they sought the protective umbrella of NATO.

Friedman, then, is factually and historically wrong: NATO expansion was not caused by an American desire to “push NATO into Russia’s face when it was weak.” NATO expansion was caused by the East European’s desire to push back when Russia became belligerent and threatening well after the Cold War ended in 1999 and 2004.

Hungary, Poland the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999. The Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the alliance in 2004.

False History. Dougherty, meanwhile, presents a falsified version of more recent history in which, he argues, Putin tried to constructively and peaceably engage Ukraine only to be stymied by a NATO hellbent on expanding eastward.

But of course, Ukraine is not a member of NATO and never has been remotely close to becoming a member of NATO. (Although in recent years, because of naked Russian aggression and Russian imperialism, Ukraine’s desire to join NATO has intensified, just as it did for the East Europeans in the late 1990’s and early aughts.)

Dougherty also ignores Putin’s own quite explicit desire to subsume Ukraine and make it an indissoluble part of Russia.

“Ukraine,” Putin said, “is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space… Modern Ukraine was entirely and fully created by Russia, more specifically the Bolshevik, communist Russia.”

In other words, Ukraine as a free, sovereign, and independent state is an historical fiction that must be erased.

As David French points out: “Vladimir Putin’s core problem with Ukraine is not with its western alliances, [or its potential membership in NATO], but with its independent existence.”

Ukraine is Not Russia. In truth, although Ukraine and Russia share deep historic roots, they are two distinct countries.

“Ukrainian identity politics and nationalism have been irritants in Russia since the feudal czarist times that predated the Russian Revolution,” observes the New York Times. 

Ukraine, moreover, voted resoundingly, in a 1991 democratic referendum, to leave the Soviet Union.

How resoundingly? Well, 83 percent of Donbass residents in Eastern Ukraine bordering Russia voted for Ukrainian independence, as did 54 percent of the residents in Crimea, reports former Ukrainian official Oleksandr Danylyuk in Politico.

Today, according to a February 2022 CNN poll, two-thirds of Ukrainians reject the notion that Ukrainians and Russians are one people.

“No region of Ukraine, and no age group,” reports CNN, “has a majority where respondents say Russians and Ukrainians are one people.

Even in eastern Ukraine, which borders Russia and is partially controlled by Russian-backed separatists, fewer than half (45%) of respondents said they agree that Russians and Ukrainians are one people – a score much lower than in Russia.

More to the point:

Ukrainians overwhelmingly feel Russia and Ukraine should be two separate countries, with 85% saying so, 9% saying they should be one country, and 6% responding that they did not know.

The bottom line: Ukraine is not Russia, and NATO expansion eastward clearly and obviously did not cause Putin to invade Ukraine.

The truth is quite the opposite: Ukraine and Russia are two distinct countries with different national aspirations. And, to the extent Ukraine is looking to the West and to NATO for protection, it is because of persistent Russian threats and aggression.

In short, America and NATO are not the problem; America and NATO are the solution to the problem, which is Russian imperialism. That’s how the Ukrainians and East Europeans see it; and about that, there can be no honest debate—Friedman and Dougherty to the contrary notwithstanding.

Feature photo credit: the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman (L) and National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty (R), courtesy of a Charlie Rose YouTube video screenshot and a Breaking Points YouTube video screenshot, respectively.