Russia and how neocons see it

Garry Kasparov is a one-time Wunderkind Russian chess champion who has also been an active dissident against the Russian government for years. He founded an NGO called the Renew Democracy Initiative in 2017, whose leadership includes “public figures from a variety of ideological backgrounds, including, among others, Kasparov, Linda Chavez, General Ben Hodges, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, General Stanley McChrystal, Anne Applebaum, Bret Stephens, and Bill Kristol.” (1)

Although RDI’s activities apparently focus on democratic governance issues, it’s pretty clear that it is, uh, at least receptive to neocon foreign policy prescriptions. As Wikipedia also notes:

In November of 2023, RDI hosted its first annual Frontlines of Freedom Conference to address transnational repression. The event was hosted in partnership with Freedom House, Johns Hopkins University, the American Enterprise Institute, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, PEN America, and the George W. Bush Presidential Center, among others.

Kasparov recently posted on Substack Notes a comment that should make all good neocons happy:

This turns the Munich Analogy into geopolitical metaphysics. Russia invaded Ukraine, which was and is not a NATO member. None of the NATO countries had a mutual-defense treaty with Ukraine. But the NATO countries provided massive military, political, and diplomatic support to it in its conflict with Russia. Including the much-overrated economic sanctions.

Why would Russia see that as anything but a sign that NATO countries would take a direct attack on a NATO member state as anything but a serious threat to their security that would trigger the mutual-defense clause? “Credibility” may be the most overrated concept in Western foreign policy discussions. But it seems very credible at the moment that at least the NATO members (except Trump’s US) are very serious about pushing back against any Russian territorial aggression against their own countries and those of their NATO partners.

In other words, the fact that NATO countries haven’t gone directly to war with Russia over Ukraine does not mean that Russia can assume they are unwilling to stand by their very-long-time NATO commitments. I would agree that NATO decisionmakers were more than a bit arrogant and even reckless in treating NATO expansion as a kind of “freebie” that would not likely result in heightened tensions with Russia. But there seems to be no good reason that Russian decisionmakers would conclude that European NATO members, even without the full support of the US, are not deadly serious about their NATO defense commitments.

There are plenty of valid questions and criticisms around the policy NATO followed since the Russian buildup in preparation for an invasion of Ukraine in late 2021 and early 2002.

I do think that there has a been a serious amount of threat inflation around the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s perfectly possible to see various and even contradictory elements in evaluating Russia’s current situation: Russia illegally invaded Ukraine in 2022 after having illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and having promoted partisan warfare against Ukraine in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (provinces).

NATO declared officially in 2008, against very public protests from Moscow, that both Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members of NATO. Russia regarded that prospect, especially with Ukraine, as an existential security threat. Russian leaders in taking that position were likely indulging in their own version of threat inflation. Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders have signaled indirectly that they might someday want to make all of Ukraine part of Russia. Russia’s government is a corrupt dictatorship dominated by Putin, a talented political operator who is willing to resort to imprisonment and assassination against opponents he finds annoying. The Russian army has committed serious war crimes in Ukraine, including mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children and sending them to Russia.

But neocons typically look at a messy combination of facts like those and retreat into their baseline position of: It’s always 1938! And Neville Chamberlain is always on the verge of giving Czechoslovakia to Hitler! And when he does it will start a new world war!!

The European view of Russia, which has historically largely been shared by the US, has been that it’s a grim autocracy which is a constant threat to its neighbors. And that was partly a reality-based view. In addition, after the Congress of Vienna of 1814-15 established a new international arrangement in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, Russia’s Czar actually became a guarantor of the old (i.e., non-democratic) regimes in Central and Western Europe.

And that was a lasting impression across the political spectrum. A majority of the German Social Democrats in 1914 voted to support war credits out of fear that a Russian victory in the war would suppress democratic governance and reinforce autocracy in Germany and much of Europe. The Russian bogeyman has been a powerful image in Europe for the last two centuries.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 which produced a Communist government in Russia flipped the bogeyman image from a rightwing to a leftwing one. And the Soviet government and Communist Party did proclaim themselves to be the vanguard of the world socialist revolution which would overthrow capitalist system in Europe and America. Once it became clear around 1923 that there was not likely to be a Communist revolution in Germany anytime soon, the USSR showed itself willing and able to make hardheaded pragmatic deals in foreign policy that did not place top priority on generating revolutions in other countries. (For that matter, Lenin’s acceptance of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in 1918 was a bluntly pragmatic decision.)

Ideology does matter, because it shapes the way the public and decisionmakers process information and set goals, But the current international system is one of sovereign states. And, as the “realist” foreign-policy theorists constantly stress, that international system imposes certain kinds of considerations on its participants. That doesn’t mean that countries have no options from which to choose. It means that they don’t have complete control over the system that defines the practical options at any given time.

And a perpetual problem is that foreign policy in all countries is made by human beings. If the TechBro dystopian visions of a world run by AI systems like Skynet in the Terminator movies actually come true, maybe they will make more competent decisions that flesh-and-blood actors. Maybe.

Ideology is a factor in foreign policy, as we see in the Authoritarian International that somehow manages to put American fascists, European antisemites and authoritarians, along with Israel and Russia into some kind of anti-democracy trend. But, unlike the elaborate doctrinal pronouncements with which Soviet leaders concerned themselves, the current capitalist (and, yes, imperialist) Russian regime does not have anything like the old Soviet Communist approach of ideological aspirations. The modern-day Kremlinologists have to sort through a variety of conservative Christian religious positions and amorphous romantic nationalist views to get a picture of what the current ruling ideology may be at any given time. Some figures like Alexander Dugin are at least known in the West as influential Russian ideological thinkers. But they don’t provide some clear master plan for a coherent “Putinist” ideological outlook.

There was a cynical saying associated with the Nixon Administration back in the day – another regime with definite authoritarian tendencies but also a cold pragmatic streak when it came to foreign policy – “Watch what we do, not what we say.”

Obviously, diplomatic signaling often takes the form of “what we say.” So policymakers can’t ignore that. But everyone needs to be cautious about neocons trotting out scary-sounding snippets of Russian statements to justify their own it’s-always-1938” perspective.

Notes:

(1) Renew Democracy Initiative. Wikipedia 03/11/2025. <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Renew_Democracy_Initiative&oldid=127987273> (Accessed: 20205-22-08).

Speculating on Russia’s goals in its neighborhood

The stolidly-establishment Council on Foreign Relations recently published an analysis by Thomas Graham, author of Getting Russia Right (2023). He writes:

Three historical impulses provide insight into Putin’s ultimate goals: the impulse to expand control to enhance security, to return to … Russia state lands that were lost for various reasons, and to reunite the three branches of the greater Russian nation. Putin has used elements of all three narratives in his rhetoric since before he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. (1)

What he refers to as the “three branches” means Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Belarus is certainly in a close alliance with Belarus. As to how much of a “vassal state” it is, opinions may vary. It’s worth remembering that the “vassal state” is a feudal concept:

In feudal times, a “vassal” (from the medieval Latin vassallus, a servant) was not a low-born serf, but one who held land on condition of allegiance to a prince or king. ...

But “vassal” very quickly came to mean anyone in a subordinate position of power to another. Shakespeare calls himself a “vassal” to his lover as well as a “slave” in Sonnet 58, and Pope Pius V testily declared Elizabeth I a “vassal of iniquity”.

In the old language of international affairs, a “vassal state” was often obliged to pay money to its superior, and usually expected to provide military assistance on demand. (2)

To borrow from John Mearsheimer, who describes his version of “offense realism” in foreign policy as based on the observation that great powers are particularly sensitive to another great power acquiring power and influence in what they consider their neighboring area. As an example, just this year, the Trump 2.0 regime has threatened military against Mexico and Panama, and implicitly against Canada. It’s also demanded that Brazil flush its rule of law down the drain when it comes to prosecuting the attempted insurrection that their authoritarian ex-President Jair Bolsonaro incited. And, as Mearsheimer often points out, the US has still never forgiven Cuba for the 1962 Missile Crisis. (Though Obama did ease sanctions on Cuba when he was President.)

So, yes, Russia does pay attention to what goes on with Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and – oh, yeah – China and Japan. Feigning surprise about that is popular among hawkish types. But it’s also more than a little silly.

The non-Soviet members of the Warsaw Pact were often referred to as vassal states of the Soviet Union. And the USSR did dominate their internal politics in a major way. But if by “vassal” state we mean that vassals pay financial tribute to the dominant country, it’s dubious if they qualified. A major reason for the collapse of the USSR was that it was a great financial burden for them to subsidize the other Warsaw Pact nations.

Graham goes to one of those broad historical generalizations about Russia in a formulation suggesting the kind of historical essentialism that so often clouds Western thinking:

Even after [Putin] annexed four Ukrainian oblasts—Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia - in the fall of 2022, he continued to insist his goal was not territorial conquest but security. That is disingenuous, for territory and security have been inextricably intertwined in Russian strategic thinking for centuries. The question is how much territory Putin believes Russia has to dominate in order to feel secure. [my emphasis]

It's not as though strategic considerations from earlier centuries are fully irrelevant today. The Monroe Doctrine which still governs US strategic thinking about Latin America was first adopted by the John Quincy Adams Administration of 1825-1829. And while that framework is still used by the US, American policy has varied considerably over those two centuries. It’s been nearly 180 years since the US forcibly annexed one-third of Mexico’s territory in what Americans call the Mexican War of 1846-1848. And the US has meddled in Mexican politics way more than it should have since then – including military intervention during the Mexican Revolution of 1810-1821. But that doesn’t mean that the US is still looking to annex Mexican territory. But since Trump 2.0 is threatening to seize territory from Panama, Canada, and even Denmark (Greenland), the longer history is relevant to understanding the current strategic picture.

The same is true of Russia and China. The fact that Ukraine was once part of the Russian Empire and then of the Soviet Union does not tell us that Russia’s current goal is the physical conquest of all of Ukraine. In fact, Graham describes Russia’s likely goal in the war at the moment in much the way Mearsheimer does, i.e., keeping immediate control of at least four eastern Ukraine provinces and the Crimean Peninsula (which is still legally part of Ukraine) and installing a friendly government in Kiev. Graham:

For the moment, the limits of Putin’s ambitions are difficult to discern. To be sure, he has been clear from the beginning that he wishes to subjugate Ukraine. How much of the country he wants to formally annex is uncertain, but he would strip any part of Ukraine that lies beyond Russia’s direct control of genuine independence and sovereignty, reducing it to a vassal state, such as Belarus is today. [my emphasis]

Russia is not occupying or annexing any part of Belarus. We can speculate about whether Russia’s supposed Grand Vision Of History means that is what obtuse Russian-nationalist publicists want. But that’s not what Russia is doing right now.

Beyond Ukraine, Putin has denied any aggressive intent or designs on any state’s territory. But his repeated threats of dire consequences for European states that step up their support to Ukraine, as well as his escalating campaign of disinformation and sabotage across Europe, have understandably raised concern. Prevalent among Western commentators is the view that if Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, he will undoubtedly turn his sights on other states of the former Soviet Union, such as the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—all of which are NATO members. At the extreme, some believe he even intends to restore the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence in eastern Europe through covert operations or direct military assault on former Soviet Bloc countries, such as Poland. [my emphasis]

Phrases like “some believe” and “raised concern” generally require closer scrutiny. Among Trumpistas in America, “some believe” in Alex Jones’ claim that there are lizard people from outer space walking around disguised as Earthlings. But while it may be a fact that “some believe” that, it doesn’t make the claim any kind of accurate description of reality.

That wording is also disingenuous when it comes to the Baltic states. Both the NATO and EU treaties include them, and both treaties include a mutual-defense clause. Foreign policy realists like George Kennan warned in the 1990s that the further east NATO expanded, the more likely it would be that Russia would regard that as a security threat. We can quibble as to whether that is rational or nice for Russia to react that way. But if we picture Mexico, Canada, and Cuba joining a military alliance with China that includes a mutual-defense clause, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to picture the freakout even the most stiffly establishment foreign-policy analysts and policymakers would have. (I.e., they would lose their minds.)

As Kaarel Pürimäe reminded us last year:

Arguing against [Bill] Clinton’s decision [to expand NATO] was the last significant thing Kennan did in his life. In October 1996, at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, Kennan reacted to a talk by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, calling the plan of NATO enlargement a ‘strategic blunder of epic proportions’. In an article in the New York Times the following year, he famously argued that it ‘would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era’. Kennan expected that NATO expansion would give rise to undemocratic and anti-Western forces in Russia and would lead to another Cold War, but was certain that official Washington would persist. He was right: it proved easy for Clinton to ignore not only Kennan, whose credibility was undermined by his long-standing opposition to NATO, but, more remarkably, the majority of the U.S. foreign policy and scholarly establishments.

Kennan’s warnings are cited as prophetic by scholars who view NATO expansion as a fateful miscalculation. Intellectual sources of the criticism vary, but most tend to point out the anachronism of preserving a Cold-War institution made to contain an adversary that no longer existed. It is argued that by expanding NATO, which in Russia was viewed as a threat to its status, if not security, the United States betrayed the West’s most ardent supporters and gave ammunition to anti-Western, nationalist, and neo-imperialist voices in that country. [my emphasis] (3)

In the case of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania – which were part of the Soviet Union - every European policymaker knows what it would mean in a very practical way if Russia actually started seizing territory there (Estonia is currently cited as the most likely candidate) and what that would do to the ever-treasured Credibility of both alliances if their Western allies didn’t respond militarily in an active way.

By the way, it’s also a safe presumption that any Russian civilian or military strategist who doesn’t spend 12 hours a day every day toking joints also realizes that the Western powers see things that way.

Graham’s concluding recommendations for four policy measures and general strategic considerations are pretty much safe and bland generalizations. Like: “In the best-case scenario, Russian rulers could even reinterpret Russian history to develop a new narrative for Russia’s greatness and global mission that appears less threatening to its immediate neighbors.”

Notes:

(1) Graham, Thomas (20258): The Limits of Putin’s Ambitions. Council on Foreign Relations 06/20/2025. <https://www.cfr.org/article/limits-putins-ambitions> (Accessed: 2025-24-07).

(2) Poole, Stephen (2018): What is a 'vassal state'? Jacob Rees-Mogg's mid-Brexit vision explained. Guardian 02/02/2018. <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/02/word-of-the-week-steven-poole-vassal> (Accessed: 2025-24-07).

Pürimäe, Kaarel (2024): ‘Geopolitics of Sympathy’: George F. Kennan and NATO Enlargement. Diplomacy & Statecraft 35:1. <https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2024.2303860>

Three phases of Vladimir Putin's own form of "Putinism"

Die Zeit's Moscow correspondent Michael Thumann gives his description of three stages Vladimir Putin's rule over Russia in "»Habe ich Angst?«" (Diktatoren ZEITGeschichte 04-2022).

He designates the three distinct periods as: a "hybrid"phase, 2000-2011; an "authoritarian" phase, 2012-2021; and, "the destruction of civil society," 2021-on.

I don't try to engage here with how precise Thumann's definitions of the varying states of Putin's rule may be. But in light of the sometimes cartoonish polemics we're currently seeing around the Ukraine war, it's useful to keep in mind that Putin's more than two decades of being the de facto chief leader of the Russian government has been marked by varying approaches on his part. Thanks to the decades-long use - mostly misuse, actually - of the Munich Analogy, the US always winds up making its opponent of the moment into "Hitler." It's a habit that generally produces more fog than clarity. How many times have we been in a conflict with the latest "Hitler" since 1945?

Putin was brought into Boris Yeltsin's government in 1997 as a Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration. Putin became Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in 1998 and then Prime Minister in August 1999, as the early clashes of what became the Second Chechen War (1999-2000) were already underway. Though the regular military phase of that war ended in 2000, Chechen insurgent activity continued for years. Western concern over human rights violations and war crimes committed by the Russian government in Chechnya was mixed with a certain amount of sympathy for Moscow's fight against "Muslim terrorists," especially after the 9/11 attack in 2001.

Konstantin Eggert describes Putin's role in that war as follows (Russia still lives in the shadow of the Chechen war Deutsche Welle 09/30/2019):

Young and energetic, he immediately started talking tough on Chechnya, especially after a series of mysterious apartment block explosions hit Moscow and the towns of Volgodonsk and Buynaksk in September. Security at any cost and "eradicating terrorism" became top priorities for the Russians. When Russian armor started moving on the Chechen capital Grozny, people knew it was not so much the ailing Yeltsin who was behind this offensive but Putin. A year later he became president.

Officially the war was called a "counter-terrorist operation." It was supposed to be brief and victorious, not least because the main leader of the Chechen forces and the republic's grand mufti, Akhmat Kadyrov, changed sides and agreed on a deal with the Kremlin. [my emphasis]

The post-Soviet Russian government under Yeltsin was structured conceptually along the lines of European and American democratic governance. But the "shock therapy" economic program Yeltsin's government undertook to transition from widespread state ownership of industry to a privatized system was not only traumatic in its reductions of the standard of living for most Russians. It also facilitated massive corruption, which went a long way toward undermining the functions of the new governmental institutions and legal system. The system was also notoriously open to fairly blatant intervention by foreign powers, as illustrated by this Time cover of its 06/15/1998 edition celebrating US assistance to Yeltsin's Presidential re-election campaign.

Yeltsin's health problems, i.e., alcoholism, didn't help to engender confidence in his leadership, either.

Neither did this incident in 1993 during his first term: Yeltsin Shelled Russian Parliament 25 Years Ago, U.S. Praised “Superb Handling” National Security Archive 10/04/2018.

And the Russian debt default of 1998 was also a major financial event for Russia and the world.

Hybrid Phase (2000-2011)

Thumann sees the "hybrid phase" of Putin's governance beginning with Putin's Presidency in 2000. After serving two four-year terms, Putin again became Prime Minister in 2008-2012 under President Dmitry Medvedev. But even during that time, Putin was already generally considered the real leader of the country.

Without repeating Yeltsin's directing of cannon fire at the Parliament (Duma) building, Thumann argues that Putin successfully undermined the Duma's power, in particular by putting his United Russia party in control together with "free-rider" parties that were nominally oppositional. "From then on, the Duma practiced faithfulness and loyalty [to Putin], and occasional heckling from the actual opposition could no longer disturb Putin in governing." (The translations here from Thumann's German article are mine.)

In other words, Putin established de facto single-party rule in the form of a so-called illiberal democracy.

Thumann sees a second key part of this "hybrid" phase in a steady undermining of the authority of "the governors and republic presidents, who ruled like little kings in the federal system of the nineties" and who "had formed a real counterweight to the center.

The third part of this "hybrid" phase was concentration of control over television stations, which Thumann considers the most important aspect. Putin's government, he writes, took control of media properties of oligarchs by "making them an offer they couldn't refuse." And political surveillance was considerably stepped up during this time.

Thumann writes, "The political technocrats loyal to the president built a hollow façade democracy in the still unoccupied space between European values and Eurasian traditions. At that time, Putin still managed without camps and police terror. He worked in the penumbra of a hybrid system in which much was under control, while a residual pluralism flourished." He argues that Moscow in particular enjoyed a more open system, including critical media, than other parts of Russia. And, not least because of rising oil prices on which the petrostate Russia is so dependent were rising, the population also experienced a genuine improvement in living standards after the devastating "shock therapy" hyper-free-market experience of the 1990s.

(I attended a panel at the 2014 Netroots Nation convention that featured a panel of Russian journalists whose presence in the US was sponsored by the State Department. It was suggested there that media in smaller media markets was at that time allowed greater leeway than in larger cities.)

Authoritarian phase (2012-2021)

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder once infamously described Putin at the start of his first Presidential term as a "flawless democrat." Putin apparently appreciated Schröder's attitude, because Schröder did a long and profitable post-Chancellorship stint as chairman of the board of the Russian oil company Rosneft.

But Putin himself turned out to be no more of a fan of competitive democracy, free and fair elections, or an independent justice system than Donald Trump or Viktor Orbán. When half a year of public protests broke out over justified public suspicions of a manipulated Duma election at the end of 2011, Putin began to worry. He had always been leery of the so-called "color" revolutions in places like Georgia and Ukraine and also those of the Arab Spring. As much of the recent commentary on the Ukraine war has mentioned, Puting saw such pro-democracy, anti-corruption movements in nearby countries as a potential threat that could spread to Russia. And he viewed the 2011-12 protests against his government as not only a threat but one instigated if not directed by Washington. (How much of that suspicion was political paranoia and/or cynical propaganda is not something that Thumann's article addresses.)

Thumann describes this phase:

With Putin's return to the Kremlin [i.e., as President] in 2012, the second, the authoritarian phase began, in which the regime systematically cracked down on Russian pluralism and expanded the repression of individual oligarchs to indiscriminate mass repression. An important instrument for this were the "agent laws", an extension of the regulations for non-governmental organizations: associations that were even remotely socially or politically active and received money from non-Russian sources had to call themselves "foreign agents". A stigma. This was accompanied by monitoring of these associations and harsh penalties for violations of bureaucratic requirements. [my emphasis]

He sees this as a period where political rights were continually restricted but which also provided decent incomes compared to the recent past with various consumerist benefits. "In Moscow and the other major cities of the country, restaurants, private clinics, summer cafes and amusement parks flourished. Animal welfare associations and dance clubs emerged. People had jobs, some got good salaries and went on holiday to Turkey."

Putin also shifted his politics to a more nationalist position. To what extent that focus was driven by ideological conviction, internal political opportunism, pressure from NATO expansion, or general Russian evilness has of course become an endless part of the polemics around the current Ukraine war. The actual foreign policy shifts Putin executed during this period don't overlay seamlessly with Thumann's three-phase scheme of his internal governance methods.

But the Russian government has been saying since the 1990s, and even more explicitly since the 2007 Munich Security Conference, is that they have viewed the enlargement of NATO as a security threat. Yeltsin's government had reluctantly made an agreement with the Clinton Administration and NATO to accept the expansion of NATO to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic that included ongoing consultation procedures. The Cheney-Bush Administration with its charge-ahead unilateralist foreign policy and its sneering contempt for diplomacy just blew off Russian concerns about further NATO expansion. And Putin's government made a distinct shift in its public posture in 2007 over discussions of adding Georgia and Ukraine to NATO.

It's worth noting here that even during the current Ukraine war, Putin himself officially took the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO in stride with the explanation that the two countries were de facto NATO members anyway. Those countries were already bound by the mutual defense clause of the European Union Treaty, a factor that seemed to be little discussed in political commentary until this year. Sergei Markov, a former official spokesperson for Putin and currently head of the very Putin-friendly Institute for Political Studies in Moscow, repeated this position just this past week. (What does Russia's naval strategy mean? Aljazeera Inside Story 08/01/2022) Which is not to say that Russia will make no foreign or military policy adjustments in response.

The Cheney-Bush Administration wanted to begin the formal accession process for Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO. Germany and France - which Bush's government treated with more-or-less open contempt - refused to go along. But at Washington's insistence, NATO make a formal statement in 2008 with its Bucharest declaration that Georgia and Ukraine would eventually become NATO members. It was a worst-of-both-worlds approach: they didn't start the formal process for accession but declared unequivocally that the two countries would eventually join.

New Cold Warriors like former US Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul take it is an article of faith that Russian policy towards Ukraine had nothing to do with NATO expansion and everything to do with some combination of Russian religious-political messianic expansion and Putin's dictatorial tendencies.

But if you are a Russian leader looking to use nationalism to boost your political position, this sequence of events worked out nicely for that scenario.

In the 2010s, world oil prices seriously crashed. For a petrostate like Russia, heavily dependent on oil and gas exports, this is always an important factor. Just as healthy oil and gas income had facilitated the "hybrid phase," falling oil prices presented new challenges for Putin's ruling model in the "authoritarian phase."

Destruction of civil society phase (2021-on)

Thumann may be anticipating the Owl of Minerva's ruling on the current Putinist period, the "destruction of civil society." He points to the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, a genuinely dodgy Duma election in September 2021, and the banning of the human rights group Memorial. Then in 2022 came the attack on Ukraine:

With the invasion of Ukraine, the authorities set in motion their plans to destroy civil society. The last free media, Radio Echo Moscow, the TV channel Dozhd, and the newspaper Novaya Gazeta headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov, had to cease their work. People who protested against the war were arrested. In Russia, since the introduction of military censorship in early March, there has been no public voice other than Putin's.

Thumann's own characterization of Putin's regime is as follows:

What should the Putin system be called today? Putinism is a kind of USSR without socialism, a pseudo-clerical-conservative moral dictatorship, a poisonous police state, repressive internally, aggressive on the outside. But this is not a new system in itself. Putin, divorced and in a relationship with an athlete, paints a picture of the conservative family as the ideal of society. The state propagandists strive for control over minds. They are creating a hermetic "Russian information space." They are deveöpüomg the ideal of the conservative strongman, who defends his weak wife and children, who cultivates his field in front of the city, and fights for the fatherland. They are mobilizing the masses for the isolation of the country and for attacking its neighbors. Hundreds of thousands are allowed to cheer the course of the leader in stadiums with flags. Society is atomized and has hardly any forms of organization beyond the vertical state. The Russian political scientist Andrei Kolesnikov calls it "hybrid totalitarianism". [my emphasis]

A construction like "hybrid totalitarianism" could easily be a euphemism for, "Who knows where this will go?" It's likely to be a while before the Owl of Minerva will be ready to make a pronouncement on this.

Russia-Ukraine war: What do we know about Russia's actual war aims?

Deutsche Welle English has this recent panel discussion on the state of the Russia-Ukraine war this past week, After capturing large parts of Donbas: will Putin have an appetite for more? 07/14/2022:

What are Russian war aims in Ukraine?

The new Cold Warriors tell us confidently that Russia invaded Ukraine because Putin is a dictator and Russia is a chronically expansionist power driven by a religious and nationalistic mission to conquer as many of its neighbors as it can. And that can only be changed by bringing about the complete collapse of Putin's government and of Russian as a major power.

Moritz Gathmann of the "highbrow"-conservative German magazine Cicero represents a version of this view in the DW English panel above. And there are other variations on that beloved theme, of course, some more heavy-handed than others. It's not considered polite in respectable commentary to note that this general outlook fits nicely with the marketing goals of weapons manufacturers.

One advantage of this viewpoint is that since it reflects stereotypical, Dr. Strangelove-type Cold War thinking, it doesn't require much tedious thought to apply it to any and all situations involving policy toward Russia. The downside is that it's practically useless in evaluating the motives and goals of specific Russian actions in the real world. That is a not-insignificant drawback in what is currently a proxy confrontation between the world's tow biggest nuclear powers. (Russian propaganda calls the Ukraine conflict a "proxy war" against Russia, so it's a touchy characterization. But the fact that one side uses/misuses it from propaganda doesn't mean it's not so. But such proxy wars in Europe were something that the US and the USSR managed to avoid after the initial Cold War civil conflicts in Greece and Turkey.)

But as George Shatzer recently observed in the context of military strategy (Russia’s Strategy and Its War on Ukraine Parameters 52:2 Summer 2022:

Even “understanding the enemy” as a concept itself is misunderstood. It is a mistake to think the aim is to predict how an enemy will behave in a given situation. Not even the enemy can predict this about themselves. Instead, it is about knowing their habits and weaknesses to understand better how they are vulnerable.

Anatol Lieven, also of the Quincy Institute, uses the military approach Russia has taken to evaluate its goals and how they may have shifted already in Why Russia has failed to achieve its goals in Ukraine Responsible Statecraft 07/12/2022:

A key reason [for Russia's surprisingly slow advances] is that the Russian government pursued two mutually contradictory goals in Ukraine. On the one hand, Moscow sought to retain influence over Ukraine as a whole. On the other, it sought the “return” to Russia of territories that it considers historically Russian.

That contradiction has been resolved. From now on, Russia’s goal is land in the south and east. As to the rest of Ukraine, Russia will still try to keep it from formally joining NATO, but Russian elites with whom I have spoken now accept — as Putin himself presumably accepts — that it will be an enemy of Russia and a de facto ally of the West for the foreseeable future. [my emphasis]

Lieven doesn't expand on who his "Russian elite" sources are, though they are presumably in some way part of the broader Russian foreign policy establishment. It's important to remember that governments at war put out various versions of their shifting positions through multiple channels. Apart from propaganda reasons, this also serves as a way of floating talking points and testing other country's responses.

What the Russian government has been saying since the 1990s, and even more explicitly since the 2007 Munich Security Conference, is that they view the enlargement of NATO as a security threat. The New Cold Warriors are especially eager to quash the idea that there was any kind of validity or even seriousness to those stated views. It probably doesn't help their argument when Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky declares confidently that the outcome of the current war is going to be that Russia "will remain paralyzed for generations." That sounds like a considerably more expansive set of war aims than restoring Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea and the Donbas region.

Here we come across the difference between the liberal-internationalist view of international relations, including its humanitarian-intervention variant, and the "realist" IR view. In terms of formal international law, any nation can join any military or political alliance it wants and their neighbors have no legitimate complaints to make about it. So taken dogmatically, the liberal-international IR view can wind up arguing that it's impossible that Russia could be motivated by any kind of legitimate security concern regard Ukraine and NATO. Even when the Ukrainian President recklessly implies that the goal of the current war is to paralyze Russia "for generations".

The realist IR view can come off as cynical. And for some of its practitioners like Henry Kissinger, it often produces cynical and brutal policies that could have and should have been avoided. But realists take full account of the painfully obvious reality that nations pay attention to their security interests and what military capabilities of other countries - obviously including their immediate neighbors - might threat their own security. John Mearsheimer even argues that big parties are particularly subject to paranoid exaggerations of security threats. But to pretend that a country has no real or legitimate interest in what their neighbors' military capabilities and intentions are is just silly.

In fact, the Russian government and Putin himself have given a range of perspectives on Russian policy toward Ukraine over the years, including talking about Belarus and Ukraine as an integral part of Russian civilization. Some of Putin's more recent statements have suggested that Russian policy is to incorporate Ukraine formally into the nation of Russia.

The specific justifications for the current war have included the claim that Ukraine is run by Nazis or fascists and is therefore inherently hostile to Russia. There are also been claims that Russian-speaking populations have been subject to serious persecution by the Ukrainian government. Neither claim holds up to serious scrutiny and are pretty obviously designed to rally Russian popular support for the military action. Factually, the first claims is largely frivolous. There is some substance to the charges that Russian-speakers in the Donbas have been discrimination against - the Minsk Agreements of 2014-15 implicitly recognized that - but it doesn't remotely justify a unilateral Russian military aggression.

What does the current state of the war tell us about Russian goals?

Lieven writes about the present situation:

This invasion plan was bedeviled by the same contradiction visible since 2014 and in Putin’s essay. Russia deployed fewer than 200,000 troops — far too few in any case to invade a country the size of Ukraine. Even more important, in pursuit of its two contradictory political goals, the Russian military divided its forces roughly equally between those intended to capture Kyiv, and those intended to occupy territory in the east and south. The first were intended to subjugate or replace the Ukrainian government and turn the whole of Ukraine into a Russian client state; the second, to seize as much Russian-speaking territory as possible in the east and south.

Largely as a result of seeking both these goals simultaneously and dividing its forces in this way, the Russian government failed completely at its first objective, and very largely at its second. On March 29, the Russian government announced that it was withdrawing its forces from around Kyiv; and, instead of a triumphant march across eastern Ukraine and the Black Sea coast, the Russian army has been reduced to a grinding war of attrition to capture small cities in the Donbas.

Moreover, this initial failure fatally undermined the war’s political goals. Russia’s ability to appeal to the population of eastern and southern Ukraine depended critically on a quick and painless victory. Instead, Russia has only been able to capture cities in the region by reducing them to rubble in months of fighting, and the invasion has been bitterly denounced by most local elected officials. [my emphasis]

This seems consistent with the commentary of Christian Ferdinand Wehrschütz, head of the Ukraine bureau of Austria’s public news agency ORF since 2015 and has established a good record in doing so. Did a did a post in German on Facebook 02/06/2022 that I quoted in this 07/16/2022 post making the point that the current level of troop numbers Russia was reported to be massing on Ukraine’s border, which is that they would be enough to take control of additional territory in the Donbass region, they didn’t sound remotely sufficient for a planned complete occupation of Ukraine.

My translation of a relevant portion:

First, as is so often the case, the question is not asked [in the article on which he is commenting] how great the expected Ukrainian (military) resistance would be! Because the Russian figures alone say nothing about the possibilities that are associated with it after an attack.

An example: for a peace mission for Donetsk and Lugansk [portions of the Donbass region currently under Russian control] – not a combat mission!!! - military planners have calculated that this would require an international force of 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers. This involves about 4 percent of Ukraine's territory. I have not met any ([Ukrainian] General Staff) officer who considers 100,000 /120,000 soldiers to be sufficient to conquer the left-bank [western portion of] Ukraine including Kiev.

In addition, this would not be a play war, but a real war with an occupying power, not to mention the Western sanctions. If the Ukrainians in Kharkiv and other cities do not capitulate without resistance, this means a war in the urban area with high losses, including for the Russians, and catastrophic images of destruction, death and misery. Apart from the Western reactions, is this so easy to "sell" to the population in Russia? [my emphasis]

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides regular updates on the military situation in Ukraine. The July 15 report notes of the recently renewed Russian offensive after a short pause:

A 10-day-long operational pause is insufficient to fully regenerate Russian forces for large-scale offensive operations. The Russian military seems to feel continuous pressure to resume and continue offensive operations before it can reasonably have rebuilt sufficient combat power to achieve decisive effects at a reasonable cost to itself, however. The resuming Russian offensive may therefore fluctuate or even stall for some time.

It's always possible that Russian officials underestimated their own military capabilities against Ukraine and excessively discounted the US-NATO response. Arrogance and overconfidence are chronic foreign policy problems for great powers, as the US has experienced on more than one occasion since the Second World War.

Role of Belarus

It's also worth noting that while Belarus actively participated in the threatening military maneuvers prior to the February 24 invasion, its direct military role in the conflict so far has been limited. Alla Leukavets in The Role of Belarus in the Ukrainian Crisis notes Focus Ukraine (Kennan Institute blog) 04/04/2022:

While everyone’s attention is focused on the dramatic events unfolding in Ukraine, the West should not forget that the Kremlin is currently waging two wars, one in Ukraine and another in Belarus, though by different means. Whereas Ukraine is presently under military attack from Russia, Belarus is being “softly” occupied without the Kremlin having to fire a single shot. Even if Putin does not succeed in overtaking Ukraine, it can be argued that Belarus under President Aliaksandr Lukashenka is quickly turning into an extension of Russian territory. It is crucial that Lukashenko’s regime not be equated with the rest of Belarus and that the pro-democratic Belarusian movement and its antiwar efforts be supported by the West.

She also mentions, "Belarus is the shortest way to Russia’s Kaliningrad oblast through the so-called Suwalki corridor, a sixty-five mile long strip of land on the Polish-Lithuanian border that provides Russia with access to the Baltic Sea but is not under Russian control." This is important to keep in mind that Lithuanian policy is closely connected with the Belarus-Russian relationship. ("Some Russian analysts suggest that Lithuania’s move to block Russia’s access to its own territory could, to some extent, be considered a ‘casus belli’ – a cause for the declaration of war." - Suwalki Gap GlobalSecurity.org n/d, accessed 07/17/2022)

Julia Ioffe on Russia at the moment

This is an informative interview with Julia Ioffe, a journalist who is also one of the better-known American "Russia experts." Julia Ioffe on the Conflict in Ukraine 05/06/2022:

Critical listening is always in order on these things. But while Ioffe takes a very dim view of Putin and his foreign policies, she's not a New Cold War hack. Much of this interview deals with Russia, including some reflections on the 1990s.

Her account of that period doesn't exactly proceed from the conventional assumptions in the US and Europe. It's very widely recognized in the West how traumatic the "shock therapy" economic transition in Russia in the 1990s was. Although there's no serious argument about the basic facts. Here's an unsigned 1998 account from the Irish Times related to the 1998 Russian financial crisis, After the failure of shock therapy what hope for Russia now? 12/31/1998. "Shock therapy" was heavily influenced by Western advisers and supported by the Clinton Administration.

If Russia was the addict as far as the abuse of financial aid was concerned, then the West was the pusher. Western institutions and countries believed that Russia's economy was improving and they believed this simply because it was what they wanted to believe.

Economic shock therapists who, only a few months ago, were claiming that their measures had been successful, are now denying that these measures were ever implemented in the first place.

The shock therapists have blamed the International Monetary Fund for what has happened. One leading commentator, while admitting that US policy in Russia had failed, came up with the bizarre message that "just because it failed does not mean it was wrong".

If any lesson is to be learned from the horrible mess in which Russia finds itself, it is that turning a blind eye to corruption simply does not pay dividends.

In the meantime ordinary Russians face hardship this winter. Deaths by starvation are most unlikely to occur in significant numbers but a further deterioration in dietary quality is very much on the cards. A more serious aspect could be the fuel crisis which has left many thousands, particularly in the far east, without heating in the run-up to that region's extremely fierce winter. [my emphasis]

In the Cold War triumphalist view that is the default assumption for American pundits, Russia back then was hitting some speed bumps on the way to the blessings of capitalism and Western-style democracy. It's safe to say that not all Russians experienced it as a benign experience.

Ioffe expresses skepticism about whether the economic sanctions will pressure Russia into calling off the war in an immediate sense. While people in the West think the sanctions will really put a lot of popular pressure on the government, she reminds us that actually Russians are used to adjusting to hard times. Also when you look at the level of success of sanctions in Cuba, Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela, you might start to wonder exactly how effective even "targeted" economics sanctions can be in getting a country to act against what it conceives as vital national interests.

Ioffe also reminds us that there is no guarantee that a post-Putin Russian government will be better than his.

And she refers to the online publication Meduza ( https://meduza.io/en ) as a good independent journalistic sources on Russian developments. I haven't been following it, so I can't offer an opinion on their reporting.

What did Russia do in the Chechnyan wars?

We've seen references during the current Russian war against Ukraine to the Chechnyan wars, i.e, and Russia's conduct there, particularly it's military attacks against the city of Grozny.

There were two Chechnyan wars, the First Chechnya War - 1994-1996 (01/03/2016), the Second Chechnya War - 1999-2006 (07/012011), and the North Caucasus Insurgency (01/20/2016) in the aftermath. (Links are to GlobalSecurity.org articles.)

Chechnya was clearly legally part of Russia and recognized as such by the US and NATO. In the 1990s, the US was already realizing that the jihadist movement the US had so heavily supported in the Afghanistan War against the USSR wasn't entirely a congenial development. So the concern of the NATO nations about Russia's fight against internal "Muslim terrorists" was more restricted. There was no Chechnyan "Volodymyr Zelenskyy" to stoke sympathy for their cause in the West. The US and NATO were in any case focused on the Balkan Wars during the 1990s, which were nightmare enough for Western politicians.

GlobalSecurity.org says of the First Chechnya War:

After a decision of unclear origin in the [Russia President Boris] Yeltsin administration, three divisions of Russian armor, pro-Russian Chechen infantry, and internal security troops -- a force including units detailed from the regular armed forces -- invaded Chechnya on 10-11 December 1994. The objective was a quick victory leading to pacification and reestablishment of a pro-Russian government. The result, however, was a long series of military operations bungled by the Russians and stymied by the traditionally rugged guerrilla forces of the Chechen separatists.

Russian military aircraft bombed both military and civilian targets in Groznyy, the capital of the republic. Regular army and MVD troops crossed the border into Chechnya on December 10 to surround Groznyy. Beginning in late December 1994, following major Chechen resistance, there was massive aerial and artillery bombardment of Chechnya's capital, Groznyy, resulting in a heavy loss of civilian life and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons. Air strikes continued through the month of December and into January, causing extensive damage and heavy civilian casualties. According to press reports, there were up to 4,000 detonations an hour at the height of the winter campaign against Groznyy.

Beyond the large number of civilians injured and killed, most residential and public buildings in Groznyy, including hospitals and an orphanage, were destroyed.

These actions were denounced as major human rights violations by Sergey Kovalev, President Yeltsin's Human Rights Commissioner, and by human rights NGO's. The Russian Government announced on December 28 that Russian ground forces had begun an operation to "liberate" Groznyy one district at a time and disarm the "illegal armed groupings." Dudayev supporters vowed to continue resisting and to switch to guerrilla warfare. [my emphasis]

The famous British spy novelist David Cornwell (better known as John Le Carre) wrote during the First Chechnya War (Schlafende Dämonen Der Spiegel 5271994 25.12.1994; my translation from the German):

Now Russian troops, tanks and artillery have crossed the border of the little-known Republic of Chechnya in the North Caucasus to depose President Dzhokar Dudayev and force his breakaway duchy of 1.2 million inhabitants back into the Russian Federation - or, as many see it, into the Russian Empire. Russian planes have repeatedly fired on the capital Grozny. As I write, Russian tanks have formed a ring around Grozny.

Russian-style peace negotiations continued next door in Christianized, Moscow-affiliated Ossetia. The Russian Foreign Minister calls the action "restoration of law and order within Russia's borders." President Clinton, apparently seeking agreement, declared the Chechen crisis an "internal matter."

The Moscow propaganda machine portrays Dudayev as a mad criminal and the Chechens as the originators of the massive organized-crime industry in Russia. It barely mentions that Dudayev was enthusiastically elected on the basis of his promise to liberate Chechnya from Russia, that Chechnya is a Muslim country, rich in oil and natural gas, that it controls an oil pipeline and important roads between the Caspian and Black Seas and is therefore indispensable for Russian economic interests, that Moscow's colonial wars have been raging continuously for 150 years in the North Caucasus - first under the white tsars, then under the red and now under a wobbly construction of both.

Le Carre's 1995 novel Our Game dealt with the First Chechnya War.

How concerned was the Clinton Administration about Russia's actions? The famous Time cover of 07/15/1996 celebrating the Americans success in, uh, intervening in the Russian Presidential election, gives an idea:

And then after the 911 attacks, the US was far too focused about the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)- particularly the Muslim version of terrorism - to expend a whole lot of effort in behalf of Russian Muslims in Chechnya. When you're running a GWOT with (in the view of some) the goal of An End to Evil, keeping Russia on good behavior toward its own citizens didn't seem so high a priority.

The Second Chechnya War lasted longer and took place during Vladimir Putin's rule, but also ended with Chechnya still a part of Russia. Uwe Klußmann wrote in 2009 for Spiegel International Russia Claims Victory in Chechnya 04/17/2009, referring also to the effects on Grozny:

The Chechen separatists lost their battle with the Kremlin because in Putin they had an opponent who believed that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. One of the main reasons for their failure, however, was the fact that between 1996 and 1999 -- the years of de facto independence -- they were never capable of establishing a stable state, never mind one based on the rule of law. The Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was a lawless state where kidnappings became a thriving industry.

Power lay in the hands of rival gangs and President Maskhadov hardly controlled anything beyond his modest residency. The Islamists, with links to the Taliban, had already become stronger before the second Chechen war. They had what the traditionalists in the resistance lacked: international ties, a stirring ideology and donations. Their overestimation of their own capabilities led them to invade the Russian semi-autonomous republic of Dagestan in August 1999. They hoped to start a holy war against the Kremlin there. However, the intervention was a fiasco, provoked a Russian backlash and was the beginning of the end of Chechnya's independence.

From late 1999 until the spring of 2000. Grozny was reduced to rubble as it received a pounding from the Russian air force. Tens of thousands of people became refugees and thousands were killed; a political vacuum opened up. Russia wanted to maintain long-term control over the rebel province but needed local personnel to do the job. They turned to Akhmad Kadyrov, the chief mufti of Chechnya. After his assassination in 2004, his son Ramzan took over the role of Moscow's most loyal ally in the country. In February 2007, Putin appointed the 30-year-old as president of the semi-autonomous republic. [my emphasis]

The Ukraine crisis and Russia-China relations

One important factor in the current Ukraine crisis doesn't seem to get a lot of coverage in the news on the crisis is the relationship of Russia and China.

Giorgio Cafiero and Daniel Wagner wrote about the China factor in the aftermath of Russia's occupation of the Crimea in 2014 (How China Benefits From the Ukraine Crisis 04/01/2014):

Having stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Russia on the Syrian civil war, China vetoed three United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions on the basis that Syria's sovereignty was threatened by Western powers. Beijing and Moscow have also defended their aligned positions on a plethora of pariah states and international crises -- all under the banner of non-interference in the affairs of sovereign nations. China was therefore placed in a difficult position when Russia was accused of violating Ukraine's sovereignty by interfering in Crimea. Fearful of being accused of moral hypocrisy, China did not want to be seen as overtly supporting Moscow, but at the same time, China was not eager to align with the West against the Kremlin, given Russia's growing importance to China's overall foreign policy.

The emerging China-Russia alliance therefore serves as a counterbalance to the U.S. while advancing China's commercial, energy and military interests. Across their shared 2,700 mile border, China and Russia have increased bilateral trade seven-fold since 2002. China has grown increasingly dependent on Russia, as the world's top energy exporter, to quench its seemingly insatiable thirst for oil and natural gas. China has become the main beneficiary of the Russian Eastern Siberia/Pacific Ocean oil pipeline, and it buys more military equipment from Russia than from any other country. [my emphasis]

China does have investments and interests in Ukraine that are not the same as Russia's. Siegfried Kottel wrote about the shift to closer relations between China and Russia in the context of the Crimean crisis of 2014 in China: Der neue Seehegemon, Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 7:2014; my translation from the German):

For a long time, it seemed as if China was treading this path [expanding its regional influence] alone. But it is precisely the Ukraine crisis that is now driving a new ally into China's arms: Russia. With his Ukraine policy, Russian President Vladimir Putin has maneuvered himself into an isolation in which Russia threatens to lose its sales markets for energy and the investments urgently needed for modernization from Western industrialized countries. This has now led the Russian president to seek greater proximity to the Chinese leadership. Chinese President Xi Jinping finds this rapprochement very convenient – for strategic reasons but also because China is always looking for new sources of energy. [my emphasis]

Kottel also noted, "The Ukraine is traditionally an important arms supplier for the Chinese Army."

Yes, there's more going on in the Ukraine crisis than a Cold-War-nostalgia testosterone contest.

Russia, NATO, China and the tensions over Ukraine

Sarah Rainsford reminds us that Russia concerns about further NATO expansion on its border is a key issue at play in the current Ukraine-Russia tensions. (Russia-Ukraine border: Why Moscow is stoking tensions BBC News 11/28/2021) It's not the only one. And of course the Russians would be glad to magnify the significance of that concern in the service of diplomacy and propaganda.

But it's unthinkable that it's not a real concern on their part, aside from the fact that they've been saying it for years. It's kind of a banal thought exercise, and oversimplified, but it might help to imagine how the US would regard Canada or Mexico joining a mutual defense treaty with Russia or China. In the world of today, it's hard to imagine that it would be regarded in the mainstream, and by most hardcore "restraint" advocates, as a very real and legitimate national security concern.

Rainsford reports:

["Most analysts"] see the Kremlin sending a message that it's ready to defend its "red lines" on Ukraine: above all, that it must not join Nato.

"I think for Putin it's really important. He thinks the West has begun giving Ukraine's elite hope about joining Nato," political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya at R.Politik told the BBC.

"The training, the weapons and so on are like a red rag to a bull for Putin and he thinks if he doesn't act today, then tomorrow there will be Nato bases in Ukraine. He needs to put a stop to that."

Ukraine's desire to join the security bloc is nothing new, nor is Russia's insistence on vetoing that ambition in what it sees as its own "back yard".

But Moscow has been rattled recently by the Ukrainian military using Turkish drones against Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine; the flight near Crimea of two nuclear-capable US bombers was an extra irritant.

There's also concern that the so-called Minsk agreements, a framework for ending Ukraine's seven-year-old conflict that's too contentious to actually implement, could be jettisoned for something more favourable to Kyiv. [my emphasis]

On the other hand, Russia's actions in 2014 would seem to have already effectively block Ukraine from joining NATO. Or rather, from NATO allowing Ukraine to join. Because Russia not only controls but has formally annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, unquestionably in violation of international law. Russia also controls the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, though without formally annexing them.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg made this comment on NATO's relation to Ukraine on 11/30/2021 (Doorstep statement NATO):

Our presence in Eastern part of the Alliance is, of course, defensive.

It was actually the increased presence of NATO troops in this Eastern part of the Alliance, in the Black Sea region, and in the Baltic region was triggered by Russia's use of force against Ukraine back in 2014, with the illegal annexation of Crimea, and with the continued destabilization of Donbas, Eastern Ukraine. So there's no doubt that this was a defensive response to what we saw back then.

I think it is important to distinguish between NATO Allies and partner Ukraine. NATO Allies, there we provide [Article 5] guarantees, collective defence guarantees, and we will defend and protect all Allies.

Ukraine is a partner, a highly valued partner. We provide support, political, practical support. Allies provide training, capacity building, equipment and I am absolutely certain that Allies will recommit and reconfirm their strong support to Ukraine also during the meeting today.

But as I said there's a difference between a partner Ukraine and an Ally like for instance Latvia. [my emphasis]

There are other closely-related issues, such as Russian pipelines serving Western Europe and its ambitions to hold Belarus as more oriented toward Russia than towards Poland and the West - the latter a situation which certainly seems to be the case at the moment!

What I have not seen much remarked on in recent news analyses of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is how it plays in Russia-China-USA relations. After all, the US from the Nixon Administration to the fall of the USSR pursued a balancing strategy of US China to balance against the Soviet Union. Russia and China have generally good relations right now. With the "New Cold War" against China getting a lot of attention during the Biden-Harris Administration, China can't be entirely sorry to see the US and NATO engaged with tensions with Russia involving Ukraine.

China has been pursuing closer relations with Ukraine for years. (Nicolas Tenzer, Europe can't ignore Chinese encroachment in Ukraine EUObserver 11/22/2021) So China definitely figures into this mix. In this case, both Russia and China have reason to be concerned about closer Ukrainian ties to the West. Although that doesn't mean China's and Russia's interests are completely aligned on Ukraine. Putin's government presumably has concerns about China gaining what it sees as excessive influence in Ukraine, too.

The Ukrainian government is not a passive pawn in all this. They are pursuing their own goals which also don't match up precisely with those of NATO, Russia, and China. See:

• Dan De Luce and Veronika Melkozerova, Fed up with the U.S., Ukraine cuts deals with China and shuts up about the Uyghurs NBC News 11/29/2021
• Emil Filtenborg and Stefan Weichert, Should Ukraine take Chinese cash for its huge roads upgrade project? Euronews 09/30/2021
• Maxim Samorukov and Temur Umarov, China’s Relations with Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova: Less Than Meets the Eye Carnegie Institute Moscow 12/31/2020
•  Valbona Zeneli and Nataliia Haluhan, Why China is Setting its Sights on Ukraine The Diploma 10/04/2019

"Quemoy-and-Matsu" Watch: Can the US really not live for more than a few years without a "new Cold War"?

The "New Cold War" narrative about conflict between the US and China rolls along, with a disturbing supply of that sacred Bipartisanship (on dubious military policies) on hand. Rajan Menon of the Quincy Institute writes in How U.S.-China ‘competition’ could lead both countries to disaster Los Angeles Times 11/22/2021.

Compare the China policies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden and you’ll find many more similarities than differences. Four months after Biden’s inauguration, Kurt M. Campbell, coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs at the National Security Council, declared that engagement, the approach American leaders have adopted toward China since the 1970s, had failed and that “the dominant paradigm is going to be competition.” A much-praised book by Campbell’s top deputy, Rush Doshi, warns that China’s goal is nothing less than supplanting the United States as the world’s premier power.

Left unsaid by both officials is what this future U.S.-China “competition” will look like, and what will prevent it from turning violent.

Both sides would incur massive losses in blood and treasure if their rivalry intensifies untempered by any sense of shared interests, and leads to war. Ditto the rest of the world.

Deutsche Welle brings this report, U.S. lawmakers vow 'rock solid' commitment to Taiwan 11/27/2021:

Note in this video that the DW interviewer comments that China has "sent in more than 150 warplanes into Taiwanese air space," with no mention of the crucial difference between Taiwan's "offshore" Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and Taiwan's sovereign airspace. Reporting on this without noting that distinction is not only lazy but irresponsible, because war hawks and defense contractor lobbyists are using a very deceptive talking point here for purposes that hardly limited to legitimate national security concerns.

After nearly a year of Biden's New Cold War policy against China, the more convinced I am that it is just a continuing of the same great-power arrogance and triumphalism that has plagued the US since the Second World War and especially since 1989.

And on this, he so far has accomplished the bipartisanship he promoted as one of his most important political assets during the 2020 Presidential campaign. Yukon Huang of the Carnegie Asia Program sketches the (bipartisan) background of the current policy this way (The U.S.-China Trade War Has Become a Cold War Carnegie Endowment 09/16/2021):

What began as a trade war over China’s unfair economic policies has now evolved into a so-called cold war propelled by differing ideologies. U.S.-China bilateral relations took a nosedive in 2018 when then U.S. president Donald Trump’s obsession with trade deficits led him to impose punitive tariffs on China. The tariffs were followed by restrictions on both China’s access to high-tech U.S. products and foreign investments involving security concerns and by allegations of unfair Chinese commercial practices.

Despite pleas from the U.S. business community to ease tensions, U.S. President Joe Biden so far has amplified his predecessor’s policies by strengthening anti-China alliances and implementing additional sanctions. Biden now characterizes the U.S.-China conflict as “a battle between the utility of democracies in the twenty-first century and autocracies.” Putin's Russia and the 'New Cold War'-Interpreting Myth and Reality 2008 But the logic underpinning the U.S. trade war was flawed, and the more recent, politically driven restrictions are counterproductive given the damaging long-term economic consequences for both sides. Nonetheless, there have been few signs to date that Biden is likely to change course. In the meantime, then, Europeans may be in a better position for productive give-and-take discussions with China on economic policymaking. [my emphasis]

The hope that the EU countries can establish some kind of offsetting policy to that of the US on China looks like a long shot, when we think about how sadly and scandalously the EU just allowed Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukachenko to send them into a panic with a few thousand refugees on the borders of Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania.

It's worth remembering that not so long ago, entrepreneurs of war were promoting the "New Cold War" - but with Russia.

The original Cold War of roughly 1947-1989 wound up spilling a lot of blood and came perilously close to a nuclear apocalypse at least a couple of time. But patriotic providers of the weapons of war made lots of money on it, so the nostalgia for a New Cold War is understandable. See, for instance, David Galbreath's review, Putin's Russia and the 'New Cold War': Interpreting Myth and Reality Europe-Asia Studies 60:9 Nov 2008. Note: In 2008, rising world oil prices were providing a substantial boost to petrostates including Russia. And this was years before the events that culminated in Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Now we're on to a New Cold War with China. Since Russia and China have a generally good relationship at the moment, it can't be too long before enthusiasts are talking about the new "Sino-Soviet bloc", right?

100th Anniversary of the Founding of the Chinese Communist Party

The Chinese Communist Party is celebrating the 100-year anniversary of its founding.

With the "new cold war" rhetoric of recent years, I notice the Republicans seem to be more often using their old favorite description, "Communist China." I haven't noticed any retro reference to "the Chicoms" lately, but they will probably start popping up soon.

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote of the old Cold War (The Culture of Contentment, 1992):

The natural focus of concern was the Soviet Union and its once seemingly stalwart satellites in Eastern Europe. Fear of the not inconsiderable competence of the Soviets in military technology and production provided the main pillar of support for American military spending. However, the alarm was geographically comprehensive. It supported expenditure and military action against such improbable threats as those from Angola, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Laos, Cambodia and, massively, tragically and at great cost, from Vietnam. From being considered a source of fear and concern, only Communist China was, from the early 1970s on, exempt. Turning against the Soviet Union and forgiven for its earlier role in Korea and Vietnam, it became an honorary bastion of democracy and free enterprise, which, later repressive actions notwithstanding, it rather substantially remains. [my emphasis]

I quote that as a reminder of how confusing it can be to describe the Chinese system. American and European commentators long found it convenient to describe China in the honorary-capitalist terms to which Galbraith alluded. On the right where characters like Jordan Peterson get a respectable hearing, it was convenient to attribute the drastic reduction in global extreme poverty in recent decades to the healthy miracle of capitalism. Fitting the large number of people in China benefiting from that change is a bit awkward for the capitalist-miracle narrative.

China, along with Cambodia, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam all considered themselves Communist countries today. But what kind of currently-existing system should be legitimately considered socialist (and/or Communist) has been a source of contention pretty much since the moment the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917. When Yugoslavia split from the Soviet Union in foreign affairs and also took a different approach to constructing a Communist system, the USSR resorted to denouncing it as a fascist country. Later China and Russia went through phases of improving relations with Yugoslavia and distancing themselves from it, all the while criticizing the other's Yugoslavia policy.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the USSR and China conducted a very public dispute - whose implications the American foreign policy establishment was remarkably slow in recognizing - which included not only a dispute over the correct approach to socialist revolution and transformation in non-socialist countries but also intense disputes over when the other was practicing true socialism. China for years polemicized against the USSR as having "restored capitalism" as a result of the post-Stalin economic reforms it undertook.

That dispute also had domestic implications in China, because in the post-Mao era, China also adopted some changes that had similarities to the post-Stalin reforms in the USSR, i.e., decentralizing planning and a greater reliance on material incentives for workers and managers. Even during Mao's rule from 1949 until his death in 1976, his economic policies swung greatly from a Stalinist economic model to experiments like the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), with alternations back to an approach more similar to the Soviet one. The former failed badly in its own terms, and seems to be generally regarded as a badly-conceived experiment. The Cultural Revolution had a more overtly political emphasis, but it too had serious effect on inhibiting economic growth. Neither event seems to be held in high esteem by the current Chinese leadership.

It seems obvious to me that China's current model is not simply a variant of neoliberal capitalism. It still relies on government-driven economic planning and measures like capital controls that are heresy to the neoliberal gospel. At the same time, China is heavily integrated economically with capitalist economies including those of the EU and especially the US. As John Kenneth's son Jamie Galbraith recently wrote (James Galbraith: China and Supply Chains – The White House Review’s Focus on US Dependence Naked Capitalism 06/25/2021). Posted on June 25, 2021 by Yves Smith):

To be sure, the Chinese still, in many important advanced areas, draw from and depend on the United States. Certainly, the US can slow the inroads of Chinese firms in some cases, and certainly the US can foster ... its own advantages in new sectors by maintaining and expanding its research and development base. Certainly, there are many things to be done in the United States to meet urgent environmental, public health, and critical social goals.

But the US position, as an economy with only one-fourth the population, equally now depends on the Chinese market, and on downstream Chinese firms supplying applications to the world. While precautions against natural disasters and pandemics can be taken – up to a point – the central unstated message of this 100-day Review [by the Biden-Harris Administration] is that the greatest risk to the supply chain, in each of the four areas, is disruption of normal trade relations with China. In short, as an objective economic matter, we learn here, the United States has an overwhelming interest in peace. [my emphasis]

Western critics mock China's building program of erecting urban areas for which they are not yet people to settle there. Whether that is wasteful "gubment planning" or forward-thinking preparation for expected economic and population growth is a matter of perspective, which time will presumably clarify.

Apart from the large of polemics over China's economic policies, China's government does clearly describe itself as socialist in its economic system and Communist in its political system. And the celebration around the 100 anniversary of the Part reflect that.

Macadrean Vidal Liy reports for the conservative-leaning Spanish El País (El Partido Comunista de China cumple 100 años reescribiendo la historia 30.06.2021):

“Con el tiempo, a los que no vivimos aquello se nos olvidan las privaciones y sacrificios que vivieron esos héroes. Al venir a verlo, los recordamos y nos sentimos inspirados para el futuro”, recita de corrido una estudiante de la Universidad Politécnica de Xian, que ha venido a Yanan en viaje de fin de curso con su clase. Otros visitantes repiten declaraciones similares."

Que sean tan parecidas no es casualidad. Es el mensaje que el Partido quiere transmitir. Desde febrero, el presidente chino, Xi Jinping, ha lanzado una campaña de dimensiones colosales, la mayor desde los tiempos de Mao, para que los 91 millones de militantes del PCCh estudien la historia oficial de la formación y para que saquen precisamente esas conclusiones. La consigna repetida una y otra vez en discursos y medios oficiales es “no olvidar nunca la intención original, recordar siempre la misión” de los primeros tiempos de la institución. ["Over time, those of us who do not experience that forget the deprivations and sacrifices that those heroes lived through. When we come to see them, we remember them and feel inspired for the future," recites a student from the Polytechnic University of Xian, who has come to Yanan [to the Museum of the Revolution] on an end-of-year trip with her class. Other visitors repeat similar statements."

That they are so similar is no coincidence. That is the message that the Party wants to convey. Since February, Chinese President Xi Jinping has launched a campaign of colossal dimensions, the largest since Mao's time, for the CCP's [Chinese Communist Party’s] 91 million militants to study the official history of the formation and to draw precisely those conclusions. The slogan repeated over and over again in speeches and official media is "never forget the original intention, always remember the mission" of the early days of the institution.] (my translation)

In other words, they are highlighting both the role of the Communist Party and the national-liberation aspect of the revolution in this narrative the article discusses.

En la versión recogida este año en el libro oficial Breve Historia del Partido Comunista de China, han desaparecido las antiguas críticas al Gran Timonel por el caos, las purgas y las muertes de la Revolución Cultural. En su lugar, aquella campaña pasa a ser elogiada como una medida anticorrupción -precisamente, la marca de la casa del mandato de Xi, que se ha deshecho de importantes enemigos políticos mediante una amplia operación contra la venalidad de los funcionarios públicos-. Las turbulencias de aquella era se achacan a una “insuficiente puesta en práctica de su ideología correcta”. Y desaparece la apostilla de “esta amarga lección histórica no debe olvidarse” en el apartado que describe el Gran Salto Adelante.

La nueva Breve Historia oficial dedica también a Xi un enorme protagonismo. Una cuarta parte de sus páginas se dedican a examinar y loar su mandato como el de un líder carismático que antepone siempre los intereses de la población. Solo su gestión de la pandemia de la covid-19 llena cinco de las 531 páginas del volumen.

[In the version collected this year in the official book Brief History of the Communist Party of China, the old criticisms of the Great Helmsman [Mao] for the chaos, purges and deaths of the Cultural Revolution have disappeared. Instead, that campaign is now hailed as an anti-corruption measure – precisely the trademark of the house of Xi's mandate, which has rid itself of major political enemies through a broad operation against the venality of public officials. The turbulence of that era is blamed on an "insufficient implementation of its correct ideology." And the apostille of "this bitter historical lesson must not be forgotten" disappears in the section that describes the Great Leap Forward.

The new official Brief History also makes Xi a huge protagonist. A quarter of its pages are devoted to examining and praising his mandate as that of a charismatic leader who always puts the interests of the people first. His handling of the covid-19 pandemic alone fills five of the volume's 531 pages.]

By the way, China and Russia are getting along pretty well right now. Russia, China declare friendship treaty extension, hail ties PBS Newshour 06/28/2021:

Putin and Xi have developed strong personal ties to bolster a “strategic partnership” between the two former Communist rivals as they vie with the West for influence and face soaring tensions in relations with the U.S. and its allies. While Moscow and Beijing in the past rejected the possibility of forging a military alliance, Putin said last fall that such a prospect can’t be ruled out entirely.

During Monday’s call, Putin congratulated Xi on the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of China celebrated Thursday, saying that China is marking it with “new achievements in the country’s social-economic development and on the international stage” and recalling Soviet support for the Chinese communists.

Moscow marked the CPC’s centennial by sharing historic documents on Soviet-Chinese links with Beijing.

Deutsche Welle News gives a background report from just before the official anniversary celebration scheduled for July 1, China gears up for the Communist Party's 100th birthday 06/29/2021:

See also: Michael Standaert, As China’s Communist Party turns 100, economic challenges loom Aljazeera 28.06.2021

Russia-EU relations and three NGOs newly banned in Russia

Wolfgang Münchau seems to be convinced that the Nord Stream 2 project is about the worst thing in the world. Or at least in Eueope. In his Eurointelligence public post of June 1 and May 28 ("Crisis in Russian-German relations"), he makes it sound like the Nord Stream 2 project is something like a completey complete capitulation of German sovereignty to Vladimir Putin.

I wrote about this last year in EU-US trade disputes, including digital firm taxes and Nord Stream 2.

In today's article, Münchau refers to three German NGOs operating in Russia that were banned, organizations that probably very few EU citizens have ever heard of:

The three NGOs are the Center for Liberal Modernity, the German Russian Exchange, and the much smaller Forum of Russian-Speaking Europeans. Russia banned them over undesirable activities that violate Russian interests. Russia accuses the organisations of justifying terrorist activities and of resisting Russian energy projects, including Nord Stream 2.

I would assume - knowing virtually nothing about the specifics - that the charge of "justifying terrorist activities" is mostly bogus, if only because it doesn't fit with the other charge. If an NGO is trying to lobby against the Nord Stream 2 project in Russia, why would it risk its credibility by "justifying terrorist activities"?

This is another reminder that international relations operate on a continuum from those activities formally considered totally legitimate to those that are cynical and illegal. And intelligence agencies will operate to gather information and promote national policy ends across that whole spectrum. It's very hard for citizens and news consumers to make an isolated judgment in cases like this where these three little-known NGOs are banned without a great deal more information about the context.

But Münchau seems to think this is all part a larger failure of German foreign policy testosterone in relations with Russia:

In this context we noted a comment by the British journalist Will Hutton who made the observation that the dictators are winning against the democrats. We agree with his observation, but disagree with the reasons. It is not because the west was not living according to its values, as Hutton argues, but because the west is willing to do dirty deals with the dictators for short-term gains, and not stand up to them. The ban of the three German NGOs is the best example of what happens if you don't. [my emphasis]

Here is some additional information about the NGOS in question. Center for Liberal Modernity (Das Progressive Zentrum website):

The Center for Liberal Modernity is a German think tank that was founded by the Green politicians Marieluise Beck and Ralf Fücks in 2017. LibMod is aimed to be a rallying point for free thinkers from different political camps, finding answers to the challenges of our time and promoting the formation of political thought in that spirit.

From the Center's website, Statement by Ralf Fücks und Marieluise Beck 05/27/2021:

Our by far biggest German-Russian project is “Climate change and eco­nomic modernization of Russia”, which comprises numerous experts from both coun­tries. In addition, we are running a German-Russian dia­logue project about the importance of Andrei Sakharov. We also host the website www.russlandverstehen.eu and the annual international conference “Russia and the West”. Our Russia-related activities are partially funded by the German Foreign Ministry.

We never disguised our critical position versus the Putin-Regime which made us focus on cooperation with Russian civil society and engaging in the debate about adequate policies vis a vis Russia in both Germany and the EU. Our dream (for the future) is a democratic and European Russia.

German Russian Exchange (DRA) website: Russia labeled the DRA as "undesirable" 05/26/2021:

During all years of its existence, the DRA has provided tens of thousands of people with additional expertise and intercultural experience through specialist and educational programs, volunteer stays, resource centers and projects to overcome conflict. In addition, our work has made possible personal contacts that have shaped the lives of those involved for many years or even forever. By co-founding and developing important international platforms, the DRA has brought civil societies in many countries closer together. Finally, for years the organization has been a member of the Petersburg Dialogue which promotes cooperation between civil societies in Germany and Russia.

Deutsche Welle reports (German-Russian Petersburg Dialogue forum in jeopardy over NGO ban 05/28/2021): "The Forum of Russian-Speaking Europeans, meanwhile, was founded in 2017 by a Berlin-based Russian exile. The organization describes itself as a network of actors 'subscribing to liberal-democratic values, who oppose Putin's dictatorship, aggression and propaganda.' The NGO stages anti-Kremlin protest events." (my emphasis)