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Russia in the 21st Century [Superthread]

Good2Golf said:
Given that the Bear got thumped when it went over The Mountain, do some not see the benefit to seeing Putin's little green men "not fight" on two fronts?  Syria and Egypt are smaller power brokers than KSA and Kuwait...let Putin stretch himself to ingratiate himself with old friends.  I look forward to when the House of Saud finally decides enough is enough and becomes more proactive in the region.

Aye, I do see benefit to Putin's non-armies being stretched.... If there is a plan to keep the mess in check.  My concern is that entropy is the natural tendency of things and that it is very easy to promote.  Dysfunction and chaos will happen naturally if nothing is done.  Speeding up the process is simple. 

What happens if Putin's plan is the equivalent of putting a torch to the place?

What happens if he decides that if he can't win then nobody else will win either?

Criminals flourish during chaotic times.

To my eye, chaos certainly seems to be expanding.  It is expanding in the areas that Putin is active.  It is expanding in areas that order has been maintained for decades - Western Europe for example - and the Middle East and North Africa. 

I suggest that it is not implausible to suppose that Putin, angry about the chaotic state of the old USSR and its near abroad, seeks to reduce his enemies in the West to the same level of impotence.

What if the Putin strategy is to Reset the game by tipping over the chess board and forcing everyone to start over - on equal terms?

I don't believe we have the luxury of pulling a Chamberlain and ignoring events in distant lands involving people about whom we know nothing.  Even if we ignore Putinesque plays like stirring the pot among our own disaffected.

I am perturbed because, while I see this playing out, I don't see any need for it to play out.  We have all the tools necessary to oppose entropy.  Those tools are the same tools that have always allowed governments to oppose entropy and chaos and impose order.  I am perturbed because I don't see any will to get off our collective duffs and act.

And as to the choice of the tools: Boots on the ground, Birds in the air - those are the equivalent of fighting fire with fire.  And they are only one strategy possible.

A forest fire is entropy writ large.  A sudden conflagration that releases energy and destroys order leaving chaos in its wake.

Fire is one tool used to fight fire.  Water is another.  Chemicals are another.  Removing fuel.  Removing oxygen. Cooling the surrounds. Creating barriers. And many more....

I don't see any evidence of a coherent strategy, hell I don't see any evidence of an incoherent strategy, that addresses the key issue: Putin.

Putin:  Robert Mugabe on steroids (and we didn't do anything about him either and Zimbabwe continues to suffer, along with the rest of his neighbours)

One outfit does benefit:  China.

In the power vacuum China advances its own Honourable East India Company strategy, imposing its own order on its own sites all over the world - from Afghanistan, to Zimbabwe, to Iran, to Oregon, to Edmonton.

I see those effects daily.  Chinese investment regularly means Chinese equipment, Chinese managers, Chinese installers and Chinese operators.  It is not illegal.  It is not even novel.  It is worrying when, instead of a gaggle of investors, a single controlling body with a plan manipulates those levers.

Edit - By the way Mugabe was a Chinese client as well.

But, by all means - leave us retire to the dock, put a line in the water and suck back another beer.  I am sure it will all work out in the end.

How's that Canadian election doing? Eh?
 
Note all above.  Don't forget, there is actually, Nature-wise, a fair bit of good that comes of forest fires, as well. ;)

G2G
 
Or did the light just go on?

There is a strategy.  And it is a coherent strategy.

Lanchester - a Brit that developed a minor machine gun and a major marketing strategy.

I was introduced to it during a marketing seminar.  It is ultimately a flanking strategy.

The example that I was given was Canon copiers.  Once upon a time the copier market was owned by a company called Xerox.  A Japanese upstart called Canon wanted to get into the game.  Their game plan started in Glasgow.  Not the US at all because that was going right at a well defended target.  So Britain.  Not London, because that was owned by Xerox.  So Glasgow.  Connected but distant so kinks in Canon`s game could be worked out, success touted and failures buried.  The plan worked.  Glasgow, London, UK, US....

Mugabe`s Zimbabwe, Putin`s Russia.  Create disorder.  Create opportunity.  Establish colonies.

It is easy, and cheap, to encourage entropy. To have your ancient enemies beating each other up is never a bad thing.  And while they are entertaining themselves.  You can establish little patches of order, to your own liking and playing by your own rules, cheaply and profitably.

It worked for the Brits.  Maybe it works for China.  Except that initially there was no Brit plan.  And when the Brits discovered why they had so many red dots on the map and tried to turn their success into a plan they lost their red dots.

To be clear - there is a strategy but it is being implemented by China.

OK - so now you can tie me up in my jacket and check the fit on my tinfoil hat.

Cheers.

And G2G, a good burnover is necessary from time to time.  But it is better to recognize that one is happening and to manage it rather than hope that if and when the time comes the conflagration will pass over you as you huddle under your survival blanket, wondering how long you can hold out.

 
Kirkhill said:
And G2G, a good burnover is necessary from time to time.  But it is better to recognize that one is happening and to manage it rather than hope that if and when the time comes the conflagration will pass over you as you huddle under your survival blanket, wondering how long you can hold out.

:nod:  Absolutely, especially if Nature is manipulated by man such that the natural process becomes modified to an extent where there is not only benefit, but previously unseen destruction.

cheers
G2G
 
Good2Golf said:
:nod:  Absolutely, especially if Nature is manipulated by man such that the natural process becomes modified to an extent where there is not only benefit, but previously unseen destruction.

cheers
G2G

Banff national park and our environmentally sensitive natives come to mind.... But we are wandering well off our path here.

Creative Destruction....It's a good thing.
 
I wonder if this guy is related to the pilot after whom the Pugachev Cobra aerial maneuver is named after?

Reuters

Exclusive: 'Putin's banker' Pugachev files $10 billion claim against Russia
Mon Sep 21, 2015 2:50pm EDT

By Guy Faulconbridge

LONDON (Reuters) - Sergei Pugachev, a tycoon once dubbed "Putin's banker" because of his influence in the Kremlin, has filed a claim against Russia for more than $10 billion after his business empire was carved up when he fell out of favor with President Vladimir Putin.

The claim was filed in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on Monday, a source close to Pugachev told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Lawyers for Pugachev will outline his claim against Russia on Tuesday in Paris, the source said.

It was not immediately possible to get a response from the Russian government. Russia is already fighting a separate ruling by the same court in 2014, which ordered Russia to pay $50 billion for expropriating the assets of Yukos, once Russia's biggest oil producer and run by Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

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I'd rather Russians die fighting ISIL than us.
As for Afghanistan and the USSR,  it was the nuclear arms and conventional arms race that brought it down, not the handful of Muhajadeen we kept supplied.
And we've done not much better there. :/
 
An interesting messaging track laid out by this commentator, pulling in the Pope:
.... Just as the chemical weapons crisis was “solved” by throwing the whole matter under the Russian bear, might the refugee crisis be “solved” the same way? Might the Holy Father lend his moral authority to Russia’s presence if Putin presents it as a more effective means to ending ISIL’s brutal persecution of the region’s indigenous Christian population? Francis insistently speaks out on the atrocities against Christians at the hands of ISIL and Putin portrays himself at home as the defender of Holy Mother Russia. He would be inclined to do the same on the world stage. Putin is eager to fill the vacuum created by the absence of international intervention in Syria. Will Francis urge that the vacuum be filled in another way? ....
 
Technoviking said:
I'd rather Russians die fighting ISIL than us.
As for Afghanistan and the USSR,  it was the nuclear arms and conventional arms race that brought it down, not the handful of Muhajadeen we kept supplied.
And we've done not much better there. :/


I agree with both your first and last points.

As to the second point, I think the biggest "defeat" Russia suffered was in the "soft power" campaign ... Russia proved, for all the world to see, that it was no different, in any respect, from any Western power, from ancient Greece to 20th century America. That put paid to the old communist (USSR) lie about being "different" or "special" and a "friend" to the developing world. Afghanistan, for Russia, in the 1970s and '80s, was the same as Viet Nam for America, in the 1960s and '70s.
 
Technoviking said:
I'd rather Russians die fighting ISIL than us.
As for Afghanistan and the USSR,  it was the nuclear arms and conventional arms race that brought it down, not the handful of Muhajadeen we kept supplied.
And we've done not much better there. :/

cargo-200-truck.jpg


This also contributed to the demise of the USSR - Russians that died fighting mujahadeen in Afghanistan - Cargo 200.

The failure resulted in loss of faith in the Kremlin, the Army and the Party.  None of which have been restored.

And that is the reason why I don't think that Putin can succeed in establishing any type of order and I don't believe that he intends to.

If you want order, if you want to paint rocks white, you are going to have to do it yourselves.

Putin's non-armies of non-soldiers and packets of half-a-dozen super-annuated tanks scattered abroad are not going to get the job done for you.

 
The former KGB agent will be meeting the former "community organizer" soon:

Reuters

Obama and Putin to meet; Syria and Ukraine vie for attention
Thu Sep 24, 2015 10:40pm EDT

By Roberta Rampton and Denis Dyomkin

WASHINGTON/MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in New York next week at a time of high tension in Europe and the Middle East, but the Kremlin and the White House disagreed on Thursday over the top priority for the talks.

The White House insisted the meeting would focus on eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed forces are fighting the Kiev government, prompting tough sanctions that have damaged Russia's economy.

Moscow, however, said the main focus would be on Syria, where Russia has built up its military forces in recent weeks with combat aircraft, tanks and other equipment in support of President Bashar al-Assad.


(...SNIPPED)
 
The real question now is how long Russia can sustain its ambitions in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Syria and so on based on their resources:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/09/russian-economy-facing-depression-high.html

Russian Economy Facing Depression, High Interest Rates and Low Oil and Gas Prices

Russia has fallen into full-blown depression and faces a mounting fiscal crisis as oil and gas revenues plummet. Output from country’s state-owned gas giant Gazprom has collapsed by 19pc over the past year as demand shrivels in Europe.

The Russian authorities have the crisis under control for now. They have allowed the ruble to fall rather than burning up reserves, providing a cushion for the budget and for oil and gas producers. But this policy is inflationary, and politically toxic.

It is 66 rubles to 1 US dollar

In March 2015, the government was forced to amend the budget in order to adapt to the $50 oil price level, and it is likely that the 2016 budget will also be tailored accordingly.

Russia has been able to weather the challenges facing its economy a bit better than Nextbigfuture thought they would back in March 2015. However, if oil prices stay low it seems to be a matter of time (1 to 4 years) before Russia has a bigger crisis. With China's economy in what appears to be long term slower growth, it seems oil prices could stay at $60 per barrel or less through 2020.

Gazprom’s revenues are likely to drop by almost a third to $106bn this year from $146bn in 2014, seriously eroding Russia’s economic base. Gazprom alone generates a tenth of Russian GDP and a fifth of all budget revenues.

The economy has contracted by 4.9pc over the past year and the downturn is certain to drag on as oil prices crumble after a tentative rally. Half of Russia’s tax income comes from oil and gas.

“Russia is going to be in a very difficult fiscal situation by 2017,” said Lubomir Mitov from Unicredit. “By the end of next year there won’t be any money left in the oil reserve fund and there is a humongous deficit in the pension fund. They are running a budget deficit of 3.7pc of GDP but without developed capital markets Russia can't really afford to run a deficit at all.”

The official reserves have dropped from $524bn to $361bn since the Ukraine crisis first erupted in late 2014. Unicredit said the true figure is nearer $340bn once other commitments are stripped out.

New Investment and Foreign Technology needed to maintain Oil Production by 2018

They are still relying on old Soviet wells,” said Mr Mitov. The depletion rates in the traditional fields of Western Siberia are running at 8pc-11pc a year.

“They can’t keep up production without access to foreign imports and technology, so we think there could be a fall in output of 5pc to 10pc by 2018,” he said.

Lukoil’s vice-president, Leonid Fedun, said in March that Russia’s oil output could fall 8pc by the end of next year, taking 800,000 barrels a day (b/d) out of global markets, with major implications for the balance of supply and demand.

Any such loss would be corrosive for Russia. It has not happened yet. Russian producers have taken advantage of a new tax regime to raise output this year to 10.7m b/d, close to the post-Soviet peak. But they are relying on legacy investments and imported machinery that must be replaced sooner or later.

Putin’s long-term strategy depends on opening up the Arctic and the vast shale reserves of the Bazhenov basin and the Volga-Urals. Drilling in these regions is covered by sanctions, forcing Western firms to freeze joint ventures.

Russia lacks the technology to make these projects viable. Average fracking costs in Russia are three times higher than those of cutting-edge drillers in the US.

SOURCES - Telegraph UK, Bloomberg, Global Risk Insights

As noted in another thread, if the US Federal Reserve were to raise interest rates IOT unf**k the economy, it would have a devastating effect on fragile economies like Russia, so the danger is that the foundation of Russia's economy is so small that unexpected shocks (i.e. a small drop of China's economic growth) could have huge effects.
 
A prisoner exchange reminiscent of the Cold War?

Sky News

Russia And Estonia Swap Spies On Bridge
Sky NewsSky News – 21 hours ago

Russia and Estonia have swapped convicted spies on a bridge that links the two countries.
It follows a period of heightened tensions between the two countries as Estonia accused the Russians of kidnapping one of the men and taking him across the border.
Russian officials said they handed over Eston Kohver, an Estonian security officer detained by Russia last year, in exchange for Alexei Dressen, a former Estonian official serving a 16-year jail term for being a Russian spy.

(...SNIPPED)

Plus, no love lost between Kiev and Moscow over flight restrictions against each other:

Reuters

Russia to consider restrictions against Ukrainian airlines
Mon Sep 28, 2015 6:46am EDT
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has given an order to the transportation ministry to consider retaliatory restrictive measures against Ukraine for banning Russian flights, the government spokeswoman Natalia Timakova said on Monday.

(...SNIPPED)
 
Aside from being in top shape, he also is a judo black belt if I can recall correctly.

Reuters

'Czar Putin': as secure as he seems?
Thu Oct 8, 2015 7:35am EDT

By Guy Faulconbridge and Stephen Grey

PARIS (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin turned 63 this week with his now traditional display of sporting prowess, and an announcement that Russian naval vessels had launched a wave of missiles against Islamic State in Syria.

The Russian leader has never appeared more confident and his grip on power never more secure. In the past two years he has outmaneuvered the West in Crimea, eastern Ukraine and Syria. Western sanctions have apparently failed to blunt his ambition.

But some of Putin's former allies, those who have fallen from grace during his 15 years in power, paint a different picture: Putin's position as Russian leader may be far less assured, they say.


(...SNIPPED)

Plus, more on Putin celebrating his 63rd birthday with a hockey game:

CNN

Putin celebrates 63rd birthday with ice hockey game and seven goals

By Jethro Mullen, CNN
Updated 5:30 AM ET, Thu October 8, 2015

(CNN)Not the kind of guy to miss a flattering photo op, Russian President Vladimir Putin put his skates on for his 63rd birthday and took to the ice.

The leader, famous for posing shirtless on horseback and in other unashamedly macho situations, played in a hockey game Wednesday night alongside former NHL stars.

As you'd expect, Putin's team won. And the man himself scored seven goals.

(...SNIPPED)
 
While Russia still has the resources to spend, they are rapidly developing a true expeditionary capability (something they did not have under the former Soviet Union). Once again, the real question isn't "can they do this?" but rather "for how long?"

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/10/russia-has-restored-much-of-its-soviet.html

Russia has restored much of its Soviet era military capability

Putin’s expansionist policy in Russia’s neighborhood is backed up by a poised and professional military thanks to Russia’s most significant military reforms since the 1930s.

ECFR Visiting Fellow Gustav Gressel, asserts that reforms initiated in response to the blundering invasion of Georgia in 2008, have left Russia with a military that would make short work of any of its neighbors, were they left isolated by their Western allies, though he calls into question Russia’s capacity in Syria.

Gressel argues that many Western policy makers, have been lulled into a false sense of security by focusing primarily on the military hardware component of Russian military modernization.

Russia’s fighter jets are, for now at least, conducting nearly as many strikes in a typical day against rebel troops opposing the government of President Bashar al-Assad as the American-led coalition targeting the Islamic State has been carrying out each month this year.

The operation in Syria — still relatively limited — has become, in effect, a testing ground for an increasingly confrontational and defiant Russia under Mr. Putin. In fact, as Mr. Putin himself suggested on Sunday, the operation could be intended to send a message to the United States and the West about the restoration of the country’s military prowess and global reach after decades of post-Soviet decay.

The Russian campaign in Syria is giving officials and analysts far greater insight into the new Russian military.

“We’re learning more than we have in the last 10 years,” said Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noting the use of the new strike fighters and the new cruise missile, known as the Kalibr. “As it was described to me, we are going to school on what the Russian military is capable of today.”

The Russian advancements go beyond new weaponry, reflecting an increase in professionalism and readiness. Russia set up its main operations at an air base near Latakia in northwestern Syria in a matter of three weeks, dispatching more than four dozen combat planes and helicopters, scores of tanks and armored vehicles, rocket and artillery systems, air defenses and portable housing for as many as 2,000 troops. It was Moscow’s largest deployment to the Middle East since the Soviet Union deployed in Egypt in the 1970s.

“What continues to impress me is their ability to move a lot of stuff real far, real fast,” Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the commander of United States Army forces in Europe, said in an interview

Since its air campaign started on Sept. 30, Russia has quickly ramped up its airstrikes from a handful each day to nearly 90 on some days, using more than a half-dozen types of guided and unguided munitions, including fragmentary bombs and bunker busters for hardened targets
 
If the Mongol Empire reunited ...

   
CDBGWbtUgAAWgTy.jpg:large


          ... and there would be NO Islamist terrorism within its boundaries, not after the first incident, anyway.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
If the Mongol Empire reunited ...

   
CDBGWbtUgAAWgTy.jpg:large


          ... and there would be NO Islamist terrorism within its boundaries, not after the first incident, anyway.

But it would then have a somewhat reduced population, wouldn't it Mr. Gengis Khan?
 
Oldgateboatdriver said:
But it would then have a somewhat reduced population, wouldn't it Mr. Gengis Khan?


The Mongols were not mindless slaughterers ... they did, now and again, kill on a large scale, but almost always, for exemplary purposes. Populations that first, treated the Khan's envoys with respect and, second, "kowtowed" when required were, generally left alone to pay their taxes and prosper, or not, as their own initiative dictated. Those that e.g. murdered the Khan's envoys were, of course, slaughtered, man woman and child ... but maybe that's how it should be ...  :o ...  ;)
 
It is not that THEY are that good.  It is that WE are that bad.

US Army forced to borrow British helicopters amid budget cuts

Reduced America military presence in Europe forces US to borrow equipment from Nato allies

By David Lawler and Ruth Sherlock, Washington1:08PM BST 19 Oct 2015

The US military has been forced to borrow British helicopters and conduct training exercises with equipment loaned by other Nato members due to budget cutbacks.

America no longer has any tanks in Europe, and the number of US troops stationed there has decreased by more than a third since 2012. Many of the weapons used for Nato exercises rotate between bases in the US and in Europe.
Lt General Ben Hodges, the US Army's commander in Europe, said allies had increasingly been called upon to loan out vehicles and supplies.

“I don’t have bridges, I don’t have the trucks that can carry tanks, we don’t have enough helicopters to do what we need to do,” he told the New York Times. “Practising with British helicopters here is an essential part of it. Using British and German bridges, using Hungarian air defence is part of it."

In an interview with the Telegraph, Gen Hodges said Britain was still playing a key role in European defence: "One of the most important things that happened in the past year was the UK saying it would maintain it's two per cent GDP [on military spending]," he said. "If the UK had dropped off that would have taken all the pressure off the other European countries."

That the world's most expensive military must now rely on borrowed hardware for its operations in Europe is indicative of the diminishing presence of the US armed forces on the continent.

The Pentagon has been hampered by sharp cuts over the past several years, and what resources are available are increasingly targeted elsewhere.

The Obama administration announced in 2012 that it would be shifting military assets away from Europe to Asia and the Middle East.
Gen Hodges said last week that America no longer has the "intelligence capacity to do what we need to do" and that, as a result he had been "suprised" by Russia's actions in Ukraine and in Syria.

"We don't have that many Russian speakers anymore," he said. "I personally have been surprised by every single snap exercise and when they went into Syria: we just do not have the capability to see and track what they're doing the way they used to."
The demands on the US Army in Europe have not decreased. Growing Russian aggression, in particular, has posed challenges that the US has been forced to prepare for with fewer troops and less equipment.

At the end of the Cold War, the US had more than 200,000 troops stationed in Europe. The current troop count is now less than one-fifth of that figure.


“The mission’s still the same,” General Hodges said. “So we have to figure out how you make 30,000 (troops) feel like 300,000.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11940511/US-Army-forced-to-borrow-British-helicopters-amid-budget-cuts.html

The answer to Vlad playing schoolyard bully?

Contrary to reports about how strong Vlad is his Fronts have become Armies and his Armies have become Brigades. His Brigades are equipped with assorted vehicles and can only move by rail from garrison to garrison.  His Air Transport fleet is shrinking and is made in Ukraine. And to top it off the only troops he can rely on are his "elite" forces - airborne, naval infantry and what used to be known as GRU.  He has no conscript base and he can't hire volunteers for service abroad.

And yet he struts the stage influencing events with a 6 pack here and an agitator there.....

And he is allowed to.

Here is a map of his Main Supply Route

map_of_russia.jpg


http://www.transsiberiantrain.com/transiberiantraintranssiberianrailway/train_moscow_russian_railways.php
 
This article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Foreign Affairs supports what Chris says about the essential weakness that lies behind Putin's opportunism:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2015-10-18/putins-potemkin-intervention
2-4-Foreign-Affairs-logo.jpg

Putin's Potemkin Intervention
The Weakness of Moscow's Syrian Adventure

By Alexander Cooley and Daniel H. Nexon

October 18, 2015

When it comes to foreign policy, U.S. President Obama’s critics have long accused him of being weak, indecisive, and naive. “Restoring resolve” to the Oval Office was a Republican theme in 2012, and it remains one among the 2016 GOP contenders. This narrative has now spread beyond Obama’s partisan opponents: many accuse Washington of responding with insufficient strength to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its support of the insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military intervention in Syria, which seeks to support Russia’s longtime ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, leaves the United States looking flatfooted. To some, it also highlights Washington’s waning power.

In short, Obama’s apparent restraint appears irresolute, whereas Putin comes across as a strong, decisive master strategist who exploits Obama’s weakness and keeps Washington off balance. The Economist declares that “Putin dares, Obama dithers,” and wishes that “Mr. Obama had a bit more of Mr. Putin’s taste for daring.” The former U.S. State Department official Jeffrey A. Stacey writes in Foreign Affairs that “when Putin stared down the West and the West blinked, the West lost its credibility and, with it, its ability to deter further Russian bad behavior.” The Telegraph columnist Matt K. Lewis notes, “Today, it looks like [Obama’s] allowing Russia to push America around, and dictate the terms of our being pushed around.”

These interpretations dangerously misread contemporary geopolitics, however. Putin’s appearance of strength is, in reality, a function of Russia’s relatively weak international position. Russia lacks a global network of allies and partners and denounces the United States’ leadership. But Moscow cannot decisively influence the rules, institutions, and norms of the international order. By contrast, what many diagnose as U.S. weakness is a symptom of its exorbitant geostrategic privilege. Prudent foreign policy requires Washington to manage its extensive and heterogeneous security commitments and global relationships carefully. This makes Putin’s style of boldness not only less difficult to pursue but also often reckless—sacrificing longer-term position for short-term gain.

THE PSEUDO-STRENGTH OF WEAK TIES

Putin faces a difficult international environment. Moscow lacks a broad international network of reliable partners and allies. And despite a decade of military reforms, Russia’s ability to project force abroad remains hampered by a lack of overseas bases. Its agreements with major base hosts—Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and the beleaguered Assad regime in Syria—are insufficient to help Russia demonstrate military might. Without substantial military power and few international allies, Russia barely qualifies as a global power.

Indeed, Putin’s actions in Syria mark the first major use Russian forces outside of its near abroad—unless one counts the mad rush to Pristina, Kosovo, in 1999 during the end of the Kosovo war—since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008 sought to check Western influence in its regional sphere of privileged interest and punish the staunchly pro-Western regime of then Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. However, despite an intensive diplomatic push, Moscow largely failed to secure international recognitions for the independence of the breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It garnered the lasting support of only Nauru, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.  The August 2008 Russia-Georgia war, of course, demonstrated Moscow’s ability to overwhelm a tiny country on its border. But, in general, Russia’s efforts to influence and leverage even its neighbors routinely fall short. As Brandon Valeriano and Ryan C. Maness write in Foreign Affairs, Moscow’s “bark is worse than its bite.”

Russia’s alliance portfolio both underscores and contributes to its problems. Moscow relies on cultivating and supporting strongman clients. It pursues this policy within its own territory, such as in Chechnya and the North Caucasus; across the “frozen” separatist entities it backs in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine; and in post-Soviet states such as Belarus and several Central Asian countries. Russia uses incentives—including subsidized energy, military assistance, and pledges of financial support—in exchange for continuing fealty to Moscow and support of Russian-backed foreign policy initiatives such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union. Yet, as the world saw with the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Russia’s political clients are often deeply kleptocratic and enjoy fragile domestic legitimacy. It should surprise no one, then, that in a post–Arab Spring, post-Maidan environment, Central Asian autocrats have followed Moscow’s lead and cracked down on the political activities of nongovernmental organizations and other forms of “foreign influence.”
Even worse, many of Russia’s clients are flight risks; they enjoy access to multiple international patrons and could leave Moscow’s sphere of influence relatively easily. For example, China offers an emerging alternative to Russian dominance in Central Asia. The European Union pulls at Russian clients in western Eurasia. This provides ways for many of Russia’s clients to enhance their autonomy from Moscow.

At the same time, Moscow continues to back counterweight organizations, such as the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, but these remain largely aspirational entities rather than effective problem-solving international bodies. Despite public calls for a Russian pivot to China, numerous cooperative arrangements between Beijing and Moscow, such as the Power of Siberia gas agreement, appear to be developing on Beijing’s terms. And China has proven unable to provide a source of financing for Russian firms that have been hit hard by Western financial sanctions and need to roll over and restructure debt. At the most basic level, Russia and China remain frenemies with often divergent—if not conflictual—strategic and economic interests.

In contrast, the United States sits at the center of a vast network of alliances, strategic partnerships, bases, and access agreements. Washington’s close allies include many of the world’s wealthiest nations—France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. It is a driving force in NATO, maintains close security cooperation with the Gulf states, enjoys deeply institutionalized alliances with every major Pacific power other than China, and has recently seen many other Asian countries tilt in its direction. Most of its linchpin regional allies, especially in Europe and Asia, are democratic regimes. In France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, the question of security cooperation with the United States concerns not whether, but how much.

Of course, critics often accuse Washington of hypocrisy. In addition to working with stable, democratic governments, the United States cooperates with a number of autocratic regimes that do not embody liberal principles. When conducting counterterrorism operations in Africa and Asia, or when establishing basing rights in Central Asia for the war in Afghanistan, Washington has cut its own fair share of deals with dictators in graft-ridden countries. But it has also paid the price in countries such as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, where it has been entangled in domestic power struggles and corruption schemes. Accusations of Washington’s double standards resonate precisely because the United States maintains such a broad range of security relationships, many of which are undergirded by liberal norms and values that are widely shared by its partners.

Beyond accusations of hypocrisy, Washington’s relations with its heterogeneous collection of allies and partners often force caution, deliberation, and legal nuance when undertaking important security decisions. When Washington refuses to provide weapons to Ukraine out of fear of regional escalation, it must still take steps to reaffirm its Article V commitments to NATO members—such as the Baltic States and Poland—by increasing its rotational presence instead. Even within NATO, the United States must lead an alliance composed of relative hawks and doves—and, in the case of Hungary, perhaps even admirers—when it comes to Russia. For those obsessed with flashy displays of boldness and resolve, it is no wonder that such prudent management of American power appears weak and indecisive.
The complications of being an alliance-rich global power extend well beyond Europe. When Washington makes a nuclear deal with Iran, it faces pressure to reassure Israel, the Gulf states, and Saudi Arabia that its alliances are every bit as strong as they were before. It must tread delicately when it comes to the various fault lines in the Middle East: Turkey and the Kurds; the tensions among Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shiites in Iraq and throughout the Middle East; and the Israel-Palestine conflict and how that plays among other U.S. allies in the region. The United States inevitably faces cross-pressures, blowback, and diplomatic gymnastics because its own policies directly impact a much larger number of relationships and global commitments than Russia’s.

Russia can ignore these same sites of conflict, even if doing so would be unwise. In the Middle East, Russia must decide between losing the Syrian regime and its basing regional foothold, or enter into a conflict where it will aim to shore up its political client and reinvigorate its relationship with Iran in the wake of the nuclear deal. In Ukraine and eastern Europe, Moscow is willing to alienate Sweden and Finland to the point where NATO membership becomes a live political option. And why not? Russia’s economic and military power is already dwarfed by that of the Western alliance. In Asia, where Russia barely has a presence, Moscow’s access to Cam Ranh Bay is complicated by the fact that it mostly serves Vietnam as a hedge in the context of growing Vietnamese-U.S. cooperation and escalating Vietnam-China tensions over the South China Sea. Russia’s attempt to support the regime in Cuba—for which it granted debt relief—now appears overtaken by the normalization of relations between Washington and Havana. And attempts to draw closer to countries such as Egypt—by offering cooperative ties with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union—are more about symbolism and status than actual legal economic integration.

DESPERATE TIMES, DESPERATE MEASURES

Moscow’s weak hand makes Russian officials scramble for the least bad option. But this weakness should also caution the West against the risk of Putin envy. Obama’s recent comments about how Putin’s adventures abroad signal weakness at home hit upon an essential truth: Moscow’s recent moves are desperate attempts to stave off the loss of clients and influence, rather than a changing of the geopolitical guard.

Russia’s Ukraine policy is more failure than success: Putin’s pressure on Yanukovych brought a pro-Western regime to power and forced Moscow to turn to military instruments to salvage its position at tremendous cost to its international standing and economy. Outside of Crimea—which in itself is likely to be an expensive albatross—Russian forces and their allies hold very little Ukrainian territory. As of now, it looks as though Russia will have to settle for a few frozen conflicts instead of a land corridor to Crimea and the collapse of a hostile Ukrainian regime. Even if Moscow’s fortunes shift, the whole stream of events showcases Russia’s weakness: the fragility of its clients, the limited efficacy of Moscow’s power-political instruments, and the large costs incurred from having to resort to force in order to maintain its small pool of allies and partners. 

The same basic dynamics likely hold in Syria. Of course, Russian intervention complicates an already dicey U.S. policy in the country, where Washington’s arming of rebels now places U.S. weapons at the firing end of Russian and pro-Assad forces. Indeed, Moscow’s intervention in Syria demonstrates that the Russia of 2015 is much more capable than the Russia of 2000. But Moscow’s actions amount to a risky attempt to prop up its only reliable Middle Eastern ally, secure practically its only overseas military base, and break from relative isolation.

Russia’s geostrategic position is overwhelmingly inferior. Combined with profound status insecurity and a regime that remains nervous about domestic stability, this constitutes a potent mix. Ironically, it leaves Moscow comparatively unfettered to engage in opportunistic and risky actions. With no extensive global alliance system to conserve, it need not worry about cross-pressures, hypocrisy costs, and other luxuries of geopolitical success. This may enable it to chip away at weak links in the American order and even to take “bold” actions to enhance its strategic outlook. But in international affairs, fortune—as Washington learned in Iraq and Libya—does not always favor the bold.


Russia looks big and bold, but it's mostly bluster and bluff, and Russia must always look over its shoulder at it "frenemy" China which is juts waiting to pounce on Siberia.
 
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