Putin’s Desperate, Unbalanced Move

V ladimir Putin has made a strategic mistake. Perhaps it was his increasing age, massive wealth, and accompanying sense of entitlement, or maybe it was an aspect of his personal and political isolation within the walls of the Kremlin. It could be that after the United States’ humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan and the ascendency of soft-power approaches to foreign policy throughout the West that he believed the age of autocrats had returned and that he and his friend Xi Jinping are about enter upon a wave of victories. Whatever the reason, the man who has played his bad hand of cards perhaps better than any political leader since Canning has badly misstepped and now will reap the whirlwind.

This is not to say that Putin will be immediately routed from his illegally claimed positions in Ukraine. If he chooses to not press for a full invasion of the largest geographic nation of Europe, he will likely hold his positions in the Donbas region and Crimea for some time to come. Neither Europe nor the United States is either ready or willing to come to the aid of the nation that deployed its military forces alongside them to both Iraq and Afghanistan based upon the justification that it never formally became a member of NATO. So tenuous is the sense of national honor throughout the West and short-termed is the memory of history that there is little chance that Ukraine will be able to attract any sense of reciprocity from Europe or the United States. Should Putin stand pat following his recognition of the two Ukrainian regions as independent entities and subsequent military occupation of them, he would be able to consolidate his gains and slowly begin the process to absorb them into Russia. That would be the smart play, but he doesn’t appear likely to do that.

While his military actions thus far have been “limited” to regions over which Russian operatives already exercise de facto control, his words demonstrate the unstable nature of his mind. Putin possesses a balanced personality; he carries chips on both of his shoulders. The theatrical meeting with his national-security council, which perhaps gained good reviews from his domestic audience, followed by his remarks regarding the historical position of Ukraine, questioning even its right to exist, has set the Eurasian community on edge — all of it. His bizarre remarks and his fictional portrayal of Russian and Ukrainian history were not those of a sober leader, but rather carried more than a whiff of the desperation associated with an increasingly aged, isolated, and frustrated dictator. If a person’s 60s are the new 40s, then it’s clear that Putin’s midlife crisis has arrived in force. He is consumed by his grievance that he has not achieved his historic ambition of restoring his nation to the top tier of great powers and fears that both his and Russia’s opportunities are passing. His tone, gestures, and historical narrative were deranged, exhibiting a bunker mindset that was noticed by all observers.

Not even President Joe Biden, who prefers soft-power approaches to the world and would like to focus his efforts on finding some political wins domestically, could afford to ignore the Russian threat any longer. After ignoring them as pre-invasion deterrent tools, he finally imposed increasingly strong economic sanctions against Russia and its oligarchic leadership and authorized increased military aid to Ukraine. He also ordered additional shipments of military equipment to Ukraine and the movement of more U.S. military forces to Europe, though it must be noted that there has been no ordering of armored forces from the United States to the continent, the type of forces that would have most likely deterred the Russian invasion.

Over the past several weeks as the crisis has mounted, Europe has awoken from its slumber. The long post–Cold War hope that Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” had been achieved has passed for everyone. It had never existed in the former Warsaw Pact–eastern European nations, and now even Germany, which had bound up so much of its political planning in reallocating resources from its defensive architecture toward social reforms and green-energy agendas, is alive to the Russian threat. France, being France, has attempted to leverage the crisis to assert what it perceives to be its rightful place as the political-thought leader of Europe. Germany now must chart a path to extricate itself from dependency upon Russia for nearly half of its energy requirements. Real moral leadership on the continent has shifted east to nations that never forgot the wolf at their door, and that door had slammed closed. By the end of his press conference, even before his military forces began to roll into the Donbas, Putin made himself a pariah in the West.

Once, while attempting to justify his support for Panamanian independence to build his canal through the isthmus, Theodore Roosevelt asked his secretary of war, Elihu Root, if he had appropriately explained himself. Root artfully replied, “You have shown that you were accused of seduction, and you have conclusively proved that you were guilty of rape.” Setting aside his physical invasion and annexation of foreign territory, which are egregious crimes in a post-Westphalian world, Putin, through his expression of a personal political and historical manifesto to justify his actions and his less-than-subtle threats against Europe and even the United States, has revealed to all the world that he is a dictator and a thug who will no longer accept restraints upon his ambitions. Where once Putin was ably positioning himself to be the gas tank of Europe, his pariah status should now make it impossible for any Western nation to deal with him militarily, diplomatically, or economically. Even if Russia vacated its position in Ukraine, to include its illegal claim of annexation of Crimea, Putin, based upon his public statements, should remain persona non grata in the West. Russia should not be allowed to reenter the family of nations so long as Putin remains in power.

It seems likely now that Putin will push forward into Ukraine, seeking to seize Kyiv and capture and imprison the political leaders who had the temerity to seek an alliance with the West. Perhaps thousands will die on both sides of the conflict to assuage the disgruntlement of Czar Vladimir I. What does this mean? For Europe, it should mean that it must redouble its efforts to strengthen itself defensively, raising its military spending from the 2014 Wales Conference goal of 2 percent of GDP to 4 percent. It should also seek absolute energy independence from Russia. The United States could make up its shortfall in the near term through increased production, tapping its energy reserves, and exports of LNG, but Europe should also look south toward the Mediterranean gas fields of Cyprus and Israel for relief as well. It should also embrace nuclear power as it once did. Its dependence upon green-energy investments were unwise, and no one should be dependent upon Putin’s Russia in windless, cloudy moments ever again.

For Russia, this means diminishment. While Putin may take part or even all of Ukraine, his dreams of rebuilding the Soviet Union are effectively dead. NATO will not stand for an incursion into the Baltics or Romania and Bulgaria, and it would be a general war if Putin tried. His energy leverage should be at an end if Europe reacts appropriately. He may still produce gas, but by his overplaying of his weak hand, he has reduced himself to a partnership with China, one in which Xi Jinping will be the senior partner. Putin’s Russia will continue to shrink in influence, perhaps brandishing its nuclear weapons about from time to time to attract attention, but its moment has passed with this impetuous public display of intemperate behavior, a point that will not go unnoticed among the powerful and wealthy oligarchs who both depend upon and support Vladimir Putin. As they lose property and wealth to sanctions, their pain could become his pain, and the condition could be terminal in his case. Many Russian czars experienced untimely demises.

Vladimir Putin came upon the scene positioning himself as a self-disciplined practitioner of realpolitik. For over 20 years, as his country’s GDP and life expectancy shrank and alcoholism rose, he skillfully guided his nation’s foreign policy to maintain its position amongst the top tier of great powers. But by his actions over the past several weeks, he has cast a pall over the international position of his country and excommunicated himself from the halls of global leadership through his outrageous violations of Westphalian norms. He has made war not only against Ukraine but also against the Western liberal-democratic order. Russia will be isolated economically and diplomatically from the West and shall decline further.

For the West, it is a time for awakening to the danger of autocracies. The challenges that it faces today are of its own making. In attempting to integrate economically with centrally controlled political entities such as Russia and China in the vain hope that they would become more Western, the opposite has occurred. Dependency upon cheap energy from Russia and inexpensive electronics from China has created conditions whereby freedom of action in the West has been constrained. The West must be alive to this danger and actively seek to disengage from such entanglements to dictators. They are far more dependent upon the West than the West is upon them. It is once again a time for hard choices. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is but one challenge facing us, and it will not be the last.