Forget Helsinki.
Forget about 2016 election interference.
Forget about President Trump’s apparent compulsion to create tighter bonds between the US and Russia, absent any obvious and tangible, strategic benefit to the United States.
Instead, to understand the true nature of US-Russian relations today, look at the world through Vladimir Putin’s eyes and experiences.
Putin was born in Leningrad in October 1952, growing up in a city that had been nearly starved out and virtually destroyed by the Nazis in WWII. Over one million Russians died during the three-year siege of Leningrad. For comparison purposes, those losses are more than three times the total battle deaths suffered by the US during all of WWII. And it was only one city.
Food rationing in Leningrad continued after the war, and due to severe housing shortages, Leningrad citizens were forced to live in communal apartments well into the 1960s. While America experienced a “golden age” of modern convenience, rising incomes and social mobility, the decades right after WWII were a period of continued deprivation for Soviet citizens. For a young Putin, WWII was not abstract and far away, as it was for Americans who did not fight. The German invasion, and its sheer brutality against civilians, were constant reminders every day.
Putin graduated college in 1975, and joined the KGB, rising quickly through its echelons to become a Lieutenant Colonel. This was the high watermark for Soviet power.
By way of context, through herculean efforts, and up to 25 percent of Soviet GDP, the USSR had created strategic nuclear parity with the US in the early 1970s. There would be no more humiliations like the Cuban Missile Crisis. At the same time, the massive investment in conventional arms had narrowed the gap between Soviet and American military technology. As America retreated globally in the aftermath of Vietnam, the Soviet Union was on the march, supporting leftist insurrections in Central America and Africa. But all of that would change rapidly in the next decade.
Putin resigned from the KGB in 1991, amid the collapse of the Soviet Union, and went into politics in the newly re-named St. Petersburg, and eventually joined Boris Yeltsin’s administration in Moscow. Only eight years later, Putin became president of Russia, and has been running the show, in one manner or another, ever since.
Putin made one his most famous – and controversial – quotes in 2005, when he said that the fall of the Soviet Union was, “one of the greatest geo-political catastrophes of the 20th century.” From a Western perspective, such a view was preposterous. But not for Putin and perhaps a very large cohort of Russians.
Consider that in 1989, the USSR, with its 15 constituent republics, had a population near 300 million and a GDP of almost $3 trillion, about half of that of the US. It was the second most powerful nation on earth economically, and maintained a rough global parity with the US militarily.
Thanks to decisive action by Stalin in the aftermath of WWII, the Soviet Union was protected by a belt of countries representing the Warsaw Pact, that kept their Western enemies 1,400 miles from Moscow. For 44 years, Soviets had accepted domestic privation to ensure that there were resources for defense to ensure that no enemy would ever again be able to do to Russia what the Germans had done in WWII.
And virtually overnight, it vanished.
In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down. In 1990, the Soviet government acquiesced to the reunification of Germany within NATO. The country that had invaded Russia twice in the 20th century, was set, again, to become the leading power in central Europe, blessed by Moscow. In 1991, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, and Russian forces redeployed to the homeland. And spectacularly, the day after Christmas that year, the USSR was formally disbanded, giving each republic sovereignty.
Next to the end of WWII, it was the greatest geopolitical event of the 20th century, and it happened without firing a shot. There is no historical precedent that matches the collapse of such a consequential power without war.
In the immediate aftermath, in 1992, Russia proper could barely muster a population of roughly 135 million with a GDP of only $435 billion. There was little money for conventional arms, which began to rust in disrepair. Only Russia’s control of the former Soviet Union’s strategic nuclear forces kept Russia relevant internationally.
At home, the end of communism and central planning created genuine chaos. Government jobs vanished. Pension checks stopped. Factories closed. It was a mass upheaval of disorder. While Western nations offered aid, even the combined dollars dwarfed the funds it would take to stabilize Russia’s economy, and all to often, the aid was targeted at Western as opposed to Russian priorities. Almost overnight, Russia went from a serious global player to a country that was weak and pitiable, whose voice on European affairs was acknowledged but largely unheeded.
That is the country and the situation that Putin walked into as president. Having come of age at the zenith of Soviet power it is no wonder that Putin saw the Soviet collapse so differently.
For Putin, the Soviet collapse wasn’t simply an inward verdict, but also and indictment of the West.
President George H.W. Bush was the American architect, in partnership with Gorbachev, in constructing the post-Cold War order. Critical to this very sensitive transition was an implicit American promise not to take advantage of the unfolding political dissolution in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union proper. To that end, one of President Bush’s most controversial actions was a speech in 1991 – nicknamed “Chicken Kiev” by angry American conservatives, where the US president cautioned against “suicidal nationalism” by Soviet republics eager to leave the USSR. Bush made the speech at the behest of Gorbachev, seeing in him the only viable partner to wind down the Cold War peacefully.
In addition to direct diplomatic help, the US extended aid, reduced Cold War era export controls on high technology and opened institutions to Russian participation. Western European allies did the same. When Bush left office in 1993, the goals of American foreign policy, as articulated during WWII and after, had largely been realized; a united Germany, with a democratic government and free market, and Eastern European countries free to elect their own governments and modernize their own economic systems. The principle of a Europe, “whole and free” had been achieved.
But as much as the world had changed, certain pillars of the old order had not. While the Warsaw Pact had been abolished and Russian troops redeployed to within Russia’s borders, NATO still existed, with a united Germany as a fully integrated member; a development that Soviet policy had spent nearly half a century trying to prevent.
Further, critical to Putin’s thinking, while the West talked a good game regarding the end of tensions in Europe, and a common political reconciliation, the practical policies spoke differently. In 1994, NATO announced its intention to extend membership to Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. While Western statesmen claimed this expansion was designed to bring stability to Eastern Europe, with NATO and the EU as dual pillars, Putin no doubt noted that Article V of the NATO treaty committed the United States to defend these countries, with nuclear weapons if necessary, and the border just moved east.
Who, except Russia, could this expansion be designed to counter?
And Western promises that NATO was more a benign political organization than a fielded military alliance fell flat when NATO led an air war in the former Yugoslavia in 1998-1999. This area of Europe, populated by Slavs, had been a vital Russian interest for centuries. Russia’s reaction to the treatment of Serbs by the Austro-Hungarian empire, catalyzed Russia’s entry into WWI. Yet Russian interests were largely dismissed.
After 9-11, NATO vastly expanded its area of operations by sending forces to Afghanistan. Instead of being an alliance geo-politically focused on Europe,as intended at its founding, NATO appeared to have transformed into a de facto global military alliance, that deployed forces wherever NATO nations deemed fit. While the NATO intervention in Afghanistan could at least be tied to the terror attack on the United States, a founding NATO member, the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, had no such justification. It was a raw political play to use military power to influence the Libyan civil war, for the benefit of European countries with significant economic interests in Libya.
And during this period, NATO expansion continued. In 2008, seven, former Warsaw Pact nations became members of NATO, including the three former Soviet Baltic Republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. This expansion did not simply bring the NATO alliance east, it literally brought NATO to Russia’s border. Putin no doubt remembered that the Germans used the Baltic states as their invasion route to get to Leningrad. Now, tree countries that had previously been part of the USSR were members of military alliance originally created to oppose Russia, two of them literally on the Russian border.
Where once there had been 1,400 miles between NATO and Moscow, there was now only 71 miles from NATO and St. Petersburg. And it did not stop there. In 1999 NATO nations agreed to a “Membership Action Plan” which would set up a process for induct new members. After the wave of 2004 memberships, NATO intensified discussions with the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and Ukraine, in addition to the remaining Slav nations in the former Yugoslavia. In recent years, Sweden and Finland have both expressed interest in joining NATO.
If you had been asleep since 1991, woke up today and looked at a map of NATO, you would believe that NATO won a war against the Soviet Union.
In addition, aside from NATO’s expansion, Putin was also keenly aware of Western “soft power.”
In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western non-profits set up offices in Russia ostensibly to ease the transition from single party socialism to multi-party capitalism. Many NGOs supported core Western values such as a free press, right to public assembly, the right to vote, and monitoring elections to ensure fairness, and perhaps most threatening, accountable government. Tellingly, in 2012, Putin blamed these groups for interfering with Russia’ presidential election, promoting widespread protests and driving opposition to Putin’s re-election. Putin blamed Hillary Clinton personally for catalyzing these efforts. After his re-election, the Russian government sponsored a wide-spread crackdown which virtually eliminated foreign NGOs from operating in Russia.
Additionally, though Russia became of member of the WTO in 2012 (11 years after China), it was routinely a junior partner to international economic discussions, and was booted altogether from the G-7 in recent years. Though The USSR was a key player in the Middle East for 40 years after WWII, Russia was all but shut out of Middle East diplomacy after 1991, when the US took on a solo role in dealing with both Arabs and Israelis.
This is the reality that Vladimir Putin sees. An ever encroaching NATO. Western efforts to destabilize his regime through the use of non-government organizations that promote values and principles contrary to
What do you do?
Putin started with a weak hand. Russia is little more than an “extractive” economy. Oil and minerals make up the bulk of hard currency exports. With the exception of heavy machinery and military equipment, the Russians are not noted for any production sectors akin to America’s Silicon Valley where entirely new industries were created.
Perhaps worse, Russia is in a demographic spiral. It is the only industrialized nation where lifespans are contracting amid a nearly non-existent birth rate. Over the next 30 years, Russia’s population will diminish significantly, to a point where its mobilization potential – the number of 18-year-old men who could theoretically be drafted for military service – will be less than 500,000 (compared with 31 million in 2009).
At the same time, the populations of countries representing the “near abroad” – nations on Russia’s borders – is set to increase. Kazakhstan, Iran, and Turkey will all see significant population increases over the next 30 years, as will Finland. This will make it increasingly difficult for the Russians to maintain control over territory that has significant extractive resources, and perhaps too weak to contain any encroachment from the West.
The future limitations on Russian power and the two-decade encroachment by NATO serves as the basis for Russian action.
First, stop momentum for NATO expansion. This was catalyzed in the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 and subsequent efforts to interfere with Ukrainian politics, to create a de facto “red line” for the West.
Next, modernize your military forces. The boom in oil prices in the ’00s filled the Russian treasury with trillions. Still, Russia’s GDP is only seven percent of the US, thus the modernization focuses on quality over quantity and the development of significant “asymmetrical” capabilities that exploit Western technological reliance, and Russia’s favorable geo-strategic position, where it can mass forces quickly decisive action for tactical advantage.
Third, shore up your borders. The annexation of the Crimea and the covert Russian support for ethic Russians in the ongoing Ukraine civil war are examples. Indeed, the Russians used both events to test new combat doctrines that blurred the lines between military and civilian players to sow confusion and place Russia at a strategic advantage. Note also that in recent years, the Russians have renewed Cold War era practices of vastly increased combat patrols in the Baltic Sea and around the periphery of NATO, in part to intimidate the Baltic states.
Recognizing that the continued cohesion of NATO is a mortal threat to Russia, utilize asymmetrical capabilities, particularly cyber-warfare, to undermine the domestic support for NATO within NATO nations.
The West, particularly the US, have mastered cyber for what could be termed more conventional military scenarios. The movie “Zero Days” shows the awesome destructive potential of American cyber capabilities to literally shut down a country’s electrical grid, permanently. At the same time, the West has been slow to appreciate how cyber could be used for more subtle influence campaigns, through misinformation, strategic hacks of data bases, and the potential for voting interference.
This is what the Russians have been doing, at least since 2014, probably earlier. All in a concerted effort to undermine support for NATO through election of nationalist governments and separatist movements (BREXIT) that are suspicious of multilateral commitments, or to divide the alliance over internal issues, such as trade.
Russia’s 2016 interference in the US presidential election, and the verdict of at least the intel community and the Senate intelligence committee, which found that the Russians were in it, at a minimum, to block Clinton or favor Trump, should come as no surprise given the facts raised here. Clinton was a known commodity who Putin believed had guided interference in Russia’s 2012 election. Payback was easy to predict. But Trump offered even more, with his emphasis on zero sum trade relations with allies, and durable skepticism of NATO.
The Special Counsel will ultimately present any evidence concerning collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. What is inescapable though, whether the collusion existed or not, is that President Trump’s America First agenda aligns almost perfectly with Putin’s longer term goals in Europe, sowing seeds of distrust between the US and her traditional allies, and sparking a loss of confidence in NATO.
Indeed, imagine the astonished delight in Moscow when President Trump questioned coming to Montenegro’s defense as a NATO member – an almost sacred national pledge – after undermining NATO allies in Brussels and calling the EU a “foe” of the US.
Whether Trump and his supporters understand it, these are the building blocks designed to destroy the Western order that has prevailed in Europe since 1991. Just because it does not occur as a result of invasion, does not make it less real. The alternative is a more ominous future for Europe where Russia reasserts its traditional interest in the Baltics, Ukraine, and perhaps into Eastern Europe, while it still has the power and forces to do so.
The ticking clock on Russia’s demographic time bomb makes now a very dangerous time.
Russia has the tools to continue is multi-dimensional disinformation campaign, which apparently remains in high gear. It also has marshalled enough modern military potential to take back by force what it cannot get through disinformation. NATO, despite it’s expansion to 29 countries, is only about 10 percent of the size it was at the end of the Cold War.
In 1989, the US had over 300,000 troops in Europe. Today that number is less than 30,000. If Russia invaded the Baltic states, there almost nothing that NATO could do to stop them. Indeed, a determined Russian invasion through Belarus into Poland and beyond could not be stopped short of the use of nuclear weapons.
This is Putin’s world. He is 62. He and his cohorts have roughly 10-15 years to play this out. It will occur sooner if the Trump administration continues its present policies.