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John B. Hagney: Putin’s posturing is not perplexing

John B. Hagney

By John B. Hagney

“NATO expansion will be the most tragic error of the post-Cold War era.” – George Kennan, architect of U.S. containment policy, 1997

Vladimir Putin personifies the historical Russian conviction that national security demands a paternalistic autocrat, religious orthodoxy and opposition to the West. Putin rules Russia through propaganda, terror and subterfuge. His popularity is due to his xenophobic nationalism and personality cult. Putin is nostalgically reassuring because for Russians, he is the czar who protects them from a perceived decadent and belligerent West.

Putin’s imperative is for Russia to be regarded by the West as a power equivalent to the U.S. and to rectify the strategic asymmetry that exists between Russia and the U.S. represented by NATO expansion.

As the Cold War ended, the U.S. declared itself the winner, “the world’s sole superpower,” some naively proclaiming “the end of history.” For Russians, such hubris was humiliating, if for no other reason than because of Russian nuclear parity with the U.S.

With Soviet disintegration, Russia was traumatized by the transition from inefficient, corrupt state socialism to “cowboy capitalism” induced by “shock therapy” economics, enabling oligarchs to pillage with impunity. Their world turned upside down, Russians regarded the U.S.’s self-anointed hegemony as outrageous. For the U.S., there was a delusional arrogance that Russia would acquiesce to its will.

The Russians have legitimate security concerns given its devastation in World War II and the fear of being encircled by NATO, the latter countered by its annexation of Crimea, military occupation of the eastern Ukraine Donbas, support of Belarus dictator Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, and its dangerous liaisons with the regimes in Turkey (a NATO member) and China, and now deployment of Russian troops to Kazakhstan, a NATO partner state.

Russia is imploding domestically. Putin has a short time to restore Western respect for Russian power and with his country ravaged by COVID-19, corruption, inequities (“Russia Named World’s Most Unequal Economy,” Moscow Times, June 10), and the silencing of opposition (most recently Alexei Nalvany and the stifling of Memorial), Putin could use an international crisis to deflect internal discontent and revive nationalist indignation against the West, externalizing Russian popular angst. Even so, there is a younger generation raised under Putin’s reign who are willing to go to the streets and reject his “imitation democracy.”

Talks commencing Monday may avert an escalation. The Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s border menaces and Putin is emphatic that Russia’s actions will not depend on talks with the U.S. but “only the unconditional provision of Russia’s security. The U.S. placing rockets at our doorstep. How would the U.S. react if we delivered rockets near their borders with Canada or Mexico?” Well, recall October 1962, U.S. missiles in Turkey, Soviet missiles in Cuba.

But unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis, hypothetically how would NATO Baltic States react if the West flinches in its NATO commitments in exchange for Russian demilitarization of the Ukrainian border? Such a scenario is unlikely yet it is possible that the U.S. and Russian present positions are non-negotiable, diplomacy in the normal sense of reciprocity and compromise are not Vladimir Putin’s modus operandi, and Putin seems impervious to sanctions.

Would such an impasse compel a full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine? After all, Putin disingenuously regards Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as coming to power in “a bloody coup d’etat” and Russia “has nowhere to retreat” over Ukraine, not a NATO member. Putin’s bellicose resolve is not out of character yet Ukraine is not Chechnya or Syria.

Perhaps Putin’s game is reminiscent of the ultimatums that the Austro-Hungarians demanded of the Serbians after the assassination of the Archduke in 1914: The Austro-Hungarians understood that the conditions they were imposing were untenable, expected a rejection, handing Austro-Hungary a pretext for war against Serbia. Thus commenced a “march of folly.”

The Biden administration’s emerging foreign policy is sensibly based on restoring our historic alliances but with winter will NATO waver as 47% of its natural gas comes from Russian sources? The State Department has been purged by the previous administration of most experienced diplomats. And up until the end of December, Senate Republicans obstructed formal approval of Biden nominees to key State posts, hampering U.S. diplomatic initiatives.

Since Republicans seem committed to subverting Biden’s foreign policy, Putin is certainly aware that the U.S. comes to the table with one hand tied behind its back. One thing of which we can be certain: Republican subterfuge implicitly plays a central role to Putin’s advantage in this dangerous game.

John B. Hagney has a master’s degree in Russian history. His thesis on Gorbachev’s reforms was published in the International Journal of Oral History, translated in six languages. He taught history for 45 years at Lewis and Clark High School