Looking forward from back to 2016 with Richard Haass on Russia and Ukraine

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

In trying to keep some perspective on the current Russia-Ukraine war, I find it particularly helpful to look back at perspectives that foreign policy experts were elaborating a few years ago, specially since 2014, the year of Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Richard Haass is president of the stereotypically establishment Council on Foreign Relations. So he's hardly some hippie pacifist. But he has an obvious pragmatic streak and is not inclined to toss out superficial hawkish slogans. I see his viewpoint on foreign affairs as an attempt to meld the "liberal internationalist" and "realist" outlooks.

In his 2016 book, A World in Disarray, Haas gives an account of developments in the relationship of the West and Russia, including  the disputes over NATO expansion to Georgia and Ukraine; the Euromaidan uprising, the Russian annexation of Ukraine, and its de facto occupation of portions of the Donbas regions all in 2014; and, the Minsk Accord of 2015.

He also notes, "in early March 2014, Putin articulated a security doctrine that essentially declared it was Russia's right to intervene on behalf of ethnic Russians where they were under threat." (The citations he gives are to two statements on the Kremlin website, which as of this writing seem to apply only to Russian-speakers in Ukraine. See also: Jon Swaine, Obama's marathon Putin Ukraine call: candid, direct but no meeting of minds Guardian 03/02/2014.)

He summarizes this background from his perspective in 2016:

All this is relevant for reasons that transcend the importance of Ukraine, a country of some forty-five million people. What happened broadly affected perceptions of and relations with Russia. lt also reintroduced a military dimension to Europe that many observers thought had vanished with the end of the Cold War. And it weakened the global norm that military force should not be used to change borders. Russia paid a political and economic price for its actions, but not one high enough to reverse a policy that enjoyed the support of most of its people. [my emphasis]

He also makes the observation, "lt is no exaggeration to say that [Putin] is less constrained by bureaucracy and colleagues than were his predecessors who oversaw the Soviet Union." But even the most centralized dictatorship has to have some social basis to survive, so even Putin faces internal constraints. As Haass writes further:

Russia's economy for its part is heavily dependent on oil and gas and thus closely tied to the price of energy. As the price in oil collapsed in 2015, the Russian economy shrank along with it. The question is whether Putin will decide to do what it takes to improve his country's relations with the outside world (so as to ease [post-2014] sanctions) and even introduce some reform, or instead turn to an even more confrontational foreign policy in an effort to tap into the population's nationalism and distract from multiple problems at home. [my emphasis]

In the context of 2022 polemics, it's worth noting here that Haass saw plausible motives for further Russian military adventures that weren't based exclusively an incurable desire of Valdimir Putin to conquer every country in Europe.

Like other countries so dependent on oil and gas to qualify as petrostates, Russia experiences that status as both a blessing and a curse. In the current situation in 2022, it has to shift its oil business to depend much more heavily on China to act as a new market to replace the reduction in Western purposes, though a complete switch can't be made overnight.

In 2016, writing six years before the February 24 invasion, Haass calls attention to the problematic nature of the 2011 US-French intervention in Libya against Muammar al-Gaddafi's government. The Obama Administration (Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State) persuaded Russia not to block a UN Security Council authorization of the intervention, which was authorized as a humanitarian action to protect mass killing of civilians. As Haas explains in a realist-pragmatic mode:

There were any number of problems with all this. First, it is far from certain that the situation on the ground warranted a humanitarian intervention. The protests against the government were violent from the outset, and any government, even an authoritarian .one, has the right to counter armed opponents. This is, after all, what civil wars are all about. What is more, there is reason to believe that the civil conflict was petering out on the eve of the NATO intervention. There was also no hard evidence that Gadhafi planned an indiscriminate attack on civilians.

Second, that the intervention quickly went beyond a narrowly designed effort to protect civilian lives (the thrust of the UN mandate) and expanded to regime change introduced important new costs. Russia and China complained bitterly that they had not signed on to any such broader undertaking. What they came to see as a diplomatic bait and switch served mostly to reinforce their view that the Responsibility to Protect doctrine was a dangerous concept that could be used to violate sovereignty and overthrow governments. Not only would gaining international support for humanitarian intervention in the future be more difficult, but Russia would use humanitarian intervention as the cynical pretext for its intervention in Ukraine. [my emphasis]

The "responsibility to protect" was a formulation that became a part of international law as a result of the Balkan Wars of the 1990s.

And Haass calls attention to the very serious effect on nuclear nonproliferation that the Libya intervention had. An effect that has been particularly magnified by the Russian intervention in Ukraine in 2014 and much more by the current conflict:

The ouster of Gadhafi also sent the unfortunate message that giving up nuclear weapons could be dangerous to your political health. In a matter of months the Libyan leader went from the poster child of responsibility in the proliferation realm to war criminal. [my emphasis]

But Haass isn't exactly a "restrainer" in international relations theory, either. He writes, "China and Russia need to know that the United States has both the will and the ability to respond locally to anything they might do." Anything?!? I guess that's not quite as expansive as "anywhere." But it still sounds pretty bluster-y. I suppose that's necessary now and then to establish one's cred as a member in good standing of the foreign policy "Blob," as Stephen Walt likes to call it.

In his 2016 book, he explicitly rejects the notion of a "containment" policy in relation to Russia or China. Instead he favors an "integration" strategy. Which sounds downright utopian now if you listen to the New Cold War polemics:

Russia's behavior in Ukraine, no matter how regrettable, is not the first phase of a bid for global domination, any more than is China's behavior in the South China Sea. Rather, each has political (nationalist) and security-related concerns that, however large, are not insatiable, and as a result can be influenced and shaped. This reinforces the case for adopting a policy toward them that is best described as "integration." lt seeks to involve them in regional and global orders both by giving them a role in defining what constitutes legitimacy and by "hedging," by making clear that they will not benefit from but rather will pay a steep price for pursuing a policy that the United States and its allies view as illegitimate. Another way to say this is that military preparations and signs of strength, while necessary, are not sufficient. The United States does not want to communicate the impression that confrontation and conflict are inevitable. lt is thus important to offer and where possible bolster what might be described as diplomatic and economic interdependence. [my emphasis]

The US and NATO and the US are currently in a "pay a steep price" mode with Russia, it seems.

Haass also makee this important caution about sanctions:

Sanctions can all too easily become the instrument of choice, a "safe" third way between doing nothing and using military force. History suggests, though, that sanctions alone can rarely accomplish big things. They can also have a range of unintended and undesirable consequences, including hurting civilians and strengthening authoritarian governments. Second, it is equally important that the United States be careful not to turn sanctions into a major source of friction with friends and allies who for one reason or another refuse to sign on to all that Congress or the executive branch desires. Sanctions should be used by the United States when they exact a price from the intended target and do not cause collateral damage to other relationships. [my emphasis]

These are risks that policymakers should keep in mind with the current extensive sanctions on Russia. Giddy triumphalism about sanctions is a risky point of view.

Haass also observes, "The focus of the relationship with both China and Russia would need to be on their external behavior - their foreign policy - rather than on their domestic politics." The Democracy vs. Autocracy foreign policy framework that some New Cold Warriors are currently promoting doesn't fit with that advice.