The Russian Encirclement Myth
Fear of invaders is justifiably ensconced in the Russian DNA. But Putin's real fear is democratic forces' threat to his hold on power.
I worked on European affairs at the State Department as communism was collapsing and ex-Soviet republics and satellite states were declaring independence en masse and tossing Moscow’s clients out in the late 1980s-early 1990s. East Germany melted away. The Baltic states regained their freedom almost overnight. Even long servile Bulgaria embraced democracy. Romania’s Ceausescu and his wife were chased down and shot — caught on film. Events moved so fast that CNN often outscooped our embassies with the latest. New governments now looked to the West. They were heady times. The customary deliberate pace of government decision-making had to be turbocharged to keep up, in concert with our allies. Policymakers suddenly faced the challenge of how to balance midwifing the newly unshackled nations to freedom and democracy with reassuring a shaky Kremlin that the West was not out to destroy the Soviet Union. They did that to themselves in 1991.
We didn’t have to worry about a cornered Gorbachev lashing out as the walls were closing in. We might have had to face such a dilemma had Boris Yeltsin not succeeded in quelling a coup launched by hardliners in August 1991.
But we have to face it now, as a weakening Russia flails in Ukraine and domestic challenges to Vladimir Putin’s power increase.
Weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, I commented:
Russia traditionally has seen itself as a nation surrounded by enemies, and therefore requires “strategic depth” through territorial expansion and client states. This has been a continuum from the tsars through the Soviet period and now under Putin, who has demanded that NATO withdraw its troops to where they were as of 1997, i.e., before NATO expansion. Putin essentially calls for restoration of Russia’s Soviet era hegemony, which would include Ukraine.
Russians are hardwired to fear invasion and encirclement. Mongols, Swedes, Poles, the French, British, Germans (twice), even Americans after the Bolshevik revolution, have invaded Russia. But pick just about any other country in Europe or Asia and one sees similar histories of foreign aggression and occupation. The Russians are not alone in this regard and therefore hardly unique or special.
In her book, Russia’s War, British Russia scholar Jade McGlynn writes that “while the war is over or about Ukraine, it cannot be solved in Ukraine because its roots lie in the Russian political and societal imagination of what their own country is and what it must be.” McGlynn asserts that even if Putin’s “special military operation” ends in military defeat and Putin’s overthrow, the Russian people will continue to wallow in their centuries-long grievance-filled version of reality.
In this parallel universe of thinking, “the decaying West is hell-bent on destroying Russia; Russia is fighting nationalist Ukrainians to save Ukraine from banderovtsy and Western machinations; Russian moral rectitude will succeed against Western hypocrisy and degradation; Russia has undertaken a defensive, pre-emptive military operation; eastern and southern Ukraine are essentially Russia; the ‘special military operation’ is one step towards creating a fairer international order.”
Finally, in McGlynn’s view, “There can be no grand reset in European–Russian or U.S.–Russian relations that does not begin with a fundamentally different Russia professing a fundamentally different view of the world.”
That healthier view of the world centers not on imaginary invaders but on the choice between autocracy and democracy. If one examines closely Putin’s views on NATO over time, it becomes clear that his real fear is not military threat from the West but democratic forces that threaten to take down his kleptocracy of corrupt oligarchs and fascistic siloviki, or security state enforcers.
In their essay, “What Putin Fears Most,” former U.S. ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul and U.S. Military Academy professor Robert Person write, “Putin fears democracy and the threat that it poses to his regime, and not expanded NATO membership.” They cite numerous examples of Putin’s benign views of the Western alliance:
In 2000 while visiting London, Putin, then serving as acting Russian president, even suggested that Russia could join NATO someday:
Why not? Why not . . . I do not rule out such a possibility . . . in the case that Russia’s interests will be reckoned with, if it will be an equal partner. Russia is a part of European culture, and I do not consider my own country in isolation from Europe . . . Therefore, it is with difficulty that I imagine NATO as an enemy.
During his November 2001 visit to the United States, Putin struck a realistic but cooperative tone:
We differ in the ways and means we perceive that are suitable for reaching the same objective . . . [But] one can rest assured that whatever final solution is found, it will not threaten . . . the interests of both our countries and of the world.
In an interview that month, Putin declared,
Russia acknowledges the role of NATO in the world of today, Russia is prepared to expand its cooperation with this organization. And if we change the quality of the relationship, if we change the format of the relationship between Russia and NATO, then I think NATO enlargement will cease to be an issue—will no longer be a relevant issue.
Putin even maintained the same attitude when it was a question of Ukraine someday entering the Atlantic Alliance. In May 2002, when asked for his views on the future of Ukraine’s relations with NATO, Putin dispassionately replied,
I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day, the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners.
So, fast forward to 2022. Why the change of mind?
Person and McFaul maintain that Putin became increasingly angst-filled with each pro-democracy “color revolution” that swept near, up to and even inside Russia’s borders: Serbian demonstrations in 2000 leading to the ouster of Slobodan Milošević followed by a democratic election, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, Georgia’s 2008 Rose Revolution, the Arab Spring in 2011, mass pro-democracy Russian demonstrations in 2011–12, Ukraine’s 2013-14 Maidan Revolution and the 2020–2021 Belarusian pro-democracy protests. “Putin has pivoted to more hostile policies toward the United States, and then invoked the NATO threat as justification for doing so,” according to McFaul and Person. And his paranoia that Washington stoked the events only increased.
Based on my own past service of dealing with transitional events in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe, I view the Biden administration’s handling of Russia-Ukraine matters as deft, balanced and sound. Keep the pressure on Moscow, but not to the point of panicking Putin to take drastic action such as deploying nuclear weapons. Give the Ukrainians all the material and diplomatic support they need to achieve victory. But I would go a step further and begin stepping up the message to the Russian people that there is another path for Russia’s future, one of embracing modernism, reform, collaboration and, yes, democracy. Unfortunately, more body bags and economic deterioration will need to befall the Russian people before the realization of the need for change sinks in. We saw this in the 1980s with Moscow’s Afghanistan quagmire (see my essay, “How to Make Russia Bleed”).
Lastly, we and our allies must be patient and let Russian internal dynamics play themselves out. Challenges to Putin’s hold on power are showing themselves with the Prigozhin mutiny, rising discontent among front-line troops and turmoil in the senior military ranks (also see, “Here’s How Putin Will be Taken Down”).
Vladimir Putin’s days are numbered and we must prepare for the post-Putin era. But the real heavy lifting will be with the Russian people on whose shoulders will fall the burden of making a fundamentally different Russia based on a fundamentally different view of the world.
The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.