Putin’s pre-invasion tirade keeps West guessing about whether he’ll stop at Ukraine.
(Originally published Feb. 25 in “What in the World“) Russian President Vladimir Putin expanded his invasion of Ukraine from eastern Donbas, launching airstrikes on several cities and Russian forces into the rest of the country that killed hundreds and sent many Ukrainians fleeing west. It was the biggest attack on a European nation since World War II and will indelibly change the post-Cold War order, which was Putin’s intention all along. The invasion has already touched off a defensive scramble in Eastern Europe, with Lithuania and Poland putting their militaries on alert and accelerating arms purchases.
Putin’s first order of business is to replace the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv with a pro-Russian one, part of what he describes as the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine and ending alleged “genocide” against Ukraine’s ethnic-Russian minority in the east. Ominously, he warned Thursday in a speech launching the attacks that anyone who interfered would face “consequences you have never faced in your history” and reminded viewers that Russia “remains one of the most powerful nuclear states” with “a certain advantage in several cutting-edge weapons.” The key lies in what Putin views as “interference.” Is that only direct military intervention, or does it include arming Ukraine or imposing crippling economic sanctions?
The invasion is a culmination of a long, drawn-out buildup in which Putin voiced long-simmering concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion. Enlisting former members of the Soviet bloc in an alliance arrayed against Russia, even after the Soviet threat had ended, deprived Russia of the geographic buffer it has historically demanded to thwart repeated invasions and squandered an opportunity to end Europe’s long and antagonistic relationship with the Russian nation. Instead, NATO expansion fed narrower, domestic political agendas in Washington, ignoring the fact that it would alienate Russia and feed its nationalistic paranoia. Even if war doesn’t spread beyond Ukraine, NATO now faces a new Russian front that challenges its defensive capabilities.
During the diplomatic scramble ahead of this week’s invasion, the West failed to given Putin the security guarantees he demanded. NATO offered Russia the equivalent of a new arms control regime in Eastern Europe, but Moscow demanded written, legal guarantees that NATO would never admit Ukraine and would also reduce forces in Eastern Europe. Whether this was an expression of real security concerns or just a delaying tactic will be for historians to debate but remains the crux of how the West should now respond.
Putin may never have been satisfied with anything less than the complete reconquest of Ukraine and the former Soviet states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Some suggest that the failure of the West to stop him in Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014 or Syria in 2015 taught him that he could invade Ukraine without serious consequences—akin to the “appeasement” that led to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939. There are ample historical parallels, starting with the similarities between Putin’s alarm at NATO expansion and how the Allies’ emasculation of Germany after World War I set the stage for Hitler’s rise to “Make Germany Great Again.”
The hope is that Putin’s aims may be more limited and tangible in scope—installing a puppet regime in Kiev and halting the expansion of U.S.-European influence. Ukraine really is Russia’s soft underbelly and the prospect of its NATO membership following the ouster of its puppet government in 2014 would have been of legitimate concern. And Russia is after all no longer the Soviet Union and isn’t dedicated to global Communism.
The worry is that Ukraine is Putin’s Sudetenland. Putin is undoubtedly looking well beyond Russian security to his own legacy, and to restoring the nation’s stature prior to the fall of the USSR in 1991. If that’s the case, he may be able to claim victory and Ukraine and stop short of triggering a wider war with Europe. Or he may have see Ukraine as just the first step.
Putin may be pursuing an even broader, global Russian purpose, of rolling back post-war American influence not just in Eastern Europe, but globally. In his speech, Putin called his invasion an attack against America’s “empire of lies” that he views as global in scope:
“Nearly everywhere, in many regions of the world where the United States brought its law and order, this created bloody, unhealing wounds and the curse of international terrorism and extremism.”
The immediate risk, therefore, is that Putin expands his campaign to the Baltics, which are already members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. An attack on them, therefore, would start a war with the West—World War III.
The second risk is how this will play out in Asia, specifically whether China will ally itself with Russia or use Putin’s “empire of lies” theme song to accompany its own territorial ambitions against Taiwan, Japan or in the South China Sea. China has already reportedly stepped up wheat imports from Russia, which could soften the pain of sanctions. And after calling for diplomatic solutions in Ukraine, Beijing sat on the fence Thursday after Russian “peacekeepers” moved into the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, refusing to call it an invasion.
Beijing has long opposed foreign interference in sovereign nations, particularly the kind of military regime change the U.S. has attempted in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria (and of course Panama, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam before them). It’s this principle that China relies on to reject U.S. criticism about China’s policies in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan. And China so far doesn’t seem convinced by Putin’s argument that Ukraine isn’t a sovereign nation.
The third risk is the U.S. and the West and how they respond. The language around the invasion has already become less nuanced and cast into starker terms of freedom and democracy vs. injustice and totalitarianism. Putin’s speech didn’t help, even if he thinks he was casting himself as the Russian superhero in this Marvel action epic. To Western ears, Putin’s speech seemed like a challenge; to others, he sounded like a caged animal, frightened and confused. The risk is that Western politicians get swept up in anti-Putin fervor to respond to the invasion in a way Putin can either claim represents interference or that does in fact increase the threat to Russian security. That would likely provoke an escalation, perhaps an attack against the Baltics.
Of course, if Putin already plans further attacks as part of a broader crusade for Russian glory against evil Americanism, one might argue that failing to counterattack will only encourage him—appeasement! The problem with this view is that, if Putin is pursuing this global vision of Russian glory, we can expect further Russian aggression regardless of whether the West responds or not. The outcome is world war either way.
The only optionality that avoids world war is derived from assuming that Putin is, despite his latest tirades, still a rational tactician pursuing real security goals and doesn’t see broader war with the U.S. and its allies, or nuclear holocaust, as a desirable outcome for the Russian nation or his legacy. If the West responds in a measured way, there’s a chance Putin will declare victory in Ukraine and call it a day. If the West counterattacks, it guarantees Putin escalates to counter what would be a legitimate threat to Russian security.
This does mean sacrificing Ukraine’s self-determination to Putin’s security concerns, real or imagined. The best outcome might be eventual Finlandization of Ukraine, but will more likely be a return to the pro-Russian puppet regime that came before 2014, or that now rules Belarus. Ukrainians will forever be able to lament the West’s betrayal. But Washington has a long habit since World War II of writing cheques it can’t cash. Putin has called that bluff in Ukraine. The U.S. has little real security or economic interests in Ukraine, at least that can compare with Russia’s. Will it go to the mat for Ukraine over democratic principles as it did in Vietnam? It seems doubtful and unwise.