Spheres of Influence and Russia's Inability to Escape Its Past
Old-fashioned partitioning of geography by potentates is as relevant today as ostrich feathered shakos and mutton chops.
In my latest piece in Washington Monthly, “How Back-Channel Diplomacy Can Prevent War With Russia,” I hold that,
A hair-trigger ‘Guns of August’ scenario of rapid escalations could cascade into armed conflict between NATO and Russian forces. More than with virtually any other national security crisis, President Joe Biden needs to try to calm Putin down behind the scenes via direct contact, but also through back-channel diplomacy.
But a grasp of history is necessary to properly read Moscow’s cues:
Americans tend to overlook or dismiss Moscow’s historical fears of “encirclement.” Russia was invaded by most of its neighbors and others at one time or other in its history. That historical fear, and the fact that they operate in their own information bubble, makes Russian leaders reflexively paranoid and belligerent. Add to this NATO expansion that over the years has brought in nine former Soviet republics and bloc allies, and Western support for the so-called “color revolutions” in Ukraine and eastern Europe.
Like a bear riled, whenever Russia — justifiably or not — feels it’s being closed in on by enemies, it lashes out, often annexing new lands in doing so. I cite two modern historical examples in my article — the Cuban Missile Crisis and the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe — on how Washington employed back channel diplomacy to get Moscow to refrain from acting rashly without losing too much face. In the case of the collapse of Communism and the Soviet Union’s denouement, I was privileged to have a ringside seat at the State Department (read about it in my article).
Vladimir Putin has issued the West an “ultimatum” to accept a new security order in Europe, as defined by him, that would protect what he sees as Russia’s sphere of influence: broadly defined as the USSR’s former constituent republics, especially Ukraine, the loss of which is like a festering wound to Russian leaders. Frankly, I don’t see much to work from to get Putin to back off. He’s pushed both himself and NATO into corners. He appears bent on a fight.
To those with some grounding in history, “spheres of influence” and “cordons sanitaires” conjure up such quasi-imperialistic arrangements as Western powers inserting themselves in China at the turn of the 20th century, British-Russian de facto partitioning of Iran, the Monroe Doctrine, the partition of Poland by Hitler and Stalin, and so on. Cynical, hoary concepts of the pre-nuclear age when self-appointed great powers divvied up smaller nations among themselves, often in the name of protecting themselves from encirclement or outmaneuvering by the others.
If anything, Putin, channeling Stalin, seems to want a Yalta 2.0, a grand settlement by “co-equals,” the United States and Russia, to establish respective spheres of influence. “This is mine. That’s yours. No trespassing.”
American cyber expert and foreign affairs commentator Dmitri Alperovitch believes Putin indeed plans to invade Ukraine to end through blunt force any notion of Ukraine, and other ex-Soviet republics, escaping Russia’s sphere of influence:
He knows that an invasion of Ukraine would put a permanent end to all talk of Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus or any Central Asian states of ever joining NATO or deployment of NATO weapons and troops on their territories without Russia’s agreement. It would instantly reinstate Russia’s sphere of influence in that part of the world. No former Soviet Union state (aside from the Baltics) would dare to flirt with NATO or EU again.
While arguing that Putin will not risk the punitive fallout of invading Ukraine, British Russia scholar Mark Galeotti, nonetheless agrees with Alperovitch on his goal in intimidating Kyiv and the West: “The aim would be to force Kyiv to capitulate and to accept political guarantees that would lock Ukraine into Russia’s sphere of influence.”
And German foreign policy expert Ulrich Speck comes to the same conclusion: “This is about Ukraine, which is slipping out of the Russian orbit — and Putin assumes it will be soon too late to force it back under Moscow’s control. This is the last opportunity, in his view.”
Trouble is, the world has moved on. Old-fashioned partitioning of geography by potentates is as relevant today as ostrich feathered shakos and mutton chops. And what Putin has in mind for Ukraine is disturbingly redolent of the West’s 1938 appeasement of Hitler over Czechoslovakia.
As with all of those elaborate pre-WWII treaties, concords and ententes, Putin, by again aggressing Ukraine, flushes down the toilet the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, the Budapest Memorandum, the Minsk Protocol and the myriad other fancy-named and intricately negotiated post-Soviet agreements meant to nudge Russia into the 21st century and join the family of civilized nations. Poof! Gone in one T-90 tank division barging across borders.
“At bottom of the Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is a traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity,” wrote George F. Kennan, author of the Cold War-era containment doctrine, in 1946.
In this sense, Russia is timeless, as recorded by Barbara Tuchman in The Guns of August: “‘This insane regime,’ its ablest defender, Count Witte, the premier of 1903-06, called it; ‘this tangle of cowardice, blindness, craftiness, and stupidity.’ The regime was ruled from the top by a sovereign who had but one idea of government — to preserve intact the absolute monarchy.”
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Всё возвращается.
Putin is timeless.
Read: “How Back-Channel Diplomacy Can Prevent War With Russia” - Washington Monthly, 12/28/21, by James Bruno
Excellent piece... a call for diplomacy instead of war.