Putin’s desperate gamble in Ukraine is revealing that the West has no idea what it wants anymore.
Putin’s desperate gamble in Ukraine is revealing that the West has no idea what it wants anymore.
V ladimir Putin is often accused of playing a bad hand well. His continent-sized nation was demeaned by Barack Obama as a mere gas station, with an economy comparable to Italy’s. But he’s also credited with using troll farms and a handful of cheesy Facebook memes to poison the debate among America’s political class, half of whom went on to portray him as an omnicompetent master of world events. This chatter about Putin’s mastery over foreign elections displeased Putin’s Russian rivals mightily.
But what we see at the border of Ukraine is not Russia playing a bad hand well. Instead, Russia has tossed out the cards, flipped over the table, and pointed a gun at the other player, hoping that will make him fold. Russia’s moves in Ukraine since 2014 have been those of a power desperately scrambling to avoid a historic disaster.
Russia had historically exercised massive influence over Ukraine with little effort. And it depends on this influence for its own security. It has historically used a naval base, located in Crimea, to project power toward Turkey and into the Mediterranean. Watching Ukraine entertain offers of an economic partnership with the EU, Russia sought to restore its decisive influence over Ukraine with a $15 billion loan and cheap energy prices. Threats were almost certainly on the table as well. When the U.S. and others countered that offer by supporting the overthrow of the Ukrainian president who agreed to it, Russia resorted to violence.
Ukraine is itself a hybridized country with very little and only very recent experience as an independent nation. It is more Catholic and Western-leaning in the west, particularly around the beautiful city of Lviv — which had historically been in the Poland-Lithuanian commonwealth. In the east and south, it is more Russian in character, and Russian Orthodox in religion.
The worst-case scenario for Ukraine is that Russia and Western Europe enact all their mutual rivalries on Ukrainian territory, trying to help one side of the country utterly dominate and humiliate the other. We saw a preview of that in 2014, and it has only meant disaster and death.
Instead, a truly independent Ukraine would have to enact a steel-willed foreign policy that mimics what Finland has achieved. Its economic ties to the West would be balanced by a forthright diplomacy that abjures ever becoming a direct security threat to the Russian state itself. By necessity, that means a policy of staying out of NATO’s open door. Henry Kissinger wisely counseled a policy of “balanced dissatisfaction” over Ukraine.
In fact, the ideal policy would be one where Ukraine’s independence, like Finland’s, allows regular opportunities for Europe and Russia to moderate and conciliate their relations.
There is no appetite among Ukrainians for an exclusive economic deal with Russia, which is poorer and has turned its economy dramatically inward. Ukrainians who have emigrated in recent years have chosen Poland for a reason: Its economy grows quickly and yields lots of opportunities with it.
But an ideal policy for Ukraine is not coming any time soon. Russia’s threats and coercion of Ukraine have revealed division in NATO. Croatia has already said it would not participate in any NATO action against Russia in Ukraine. This partly vindicates critics of NATO’s promiscuous expansion, which included under its security umbrella states that have a significant native pro-Russian sentiment, and insignificant military resources. Countries like Croatia and Montenegro can contribute nothing meaningful to NATO except setting a standard for internal dissension.
However, the most significant dissension comes from NATO’s second-largest economy. Germany, already suffering from a major surge in energy prices, has signaled serious hesitation about economic sanctions of Russia should it invade Ukraine. French president Emmanuel Macron, at the very moment of NATO’s crisis, has suddenly demanded a public rethink of Europe’s security. And the dithering does start at the top too, with President Joe Biden all but signaling that smaller-scale violations of Ukraine would be tolerated.
Russia has flipped over the table. Putin has put pressure on Ukraine. The only useful response from NATO and the Western powers would be to clearly signal precisely what they are willing to do and what they are not willing to do for Ukraine in the near term and medium term. Without this, Ukraine cannot sensibly conduct a diplomatic effort to avoid catastrophe.
Instead, Putin’s desperate gamble in Ukraine is revealing that the West has no idea what it wants anymore. It wants all the high ideals of freedom for everyone. But the burdens that come with it? Not so much.