The Next Decade (20 page)
Ukraine-Kazakhstan Gap
The initial winner of the Ukrainian election in 2004, President Viktor Yanukovich, was accused of widespread electoral fraud, of which he was no doubt guilty, and demonstrations took place to demand that the election be annulled, that Yanukovich step down, and that new elections be held. This uproar, known as the Orange Revolution, was seen by Moscow as a pro-Western, anti-Russian uprising designed to take Ukraine into NATO. The Russians also charged that rather than being a popular uprising, it was a carefully orchestrated coup, sponsored by the CIA and the British MI6. According to the Russians, Western nongovernmental organizations and consulting groups had flooded Ukraine to stage the demonstrations, unseat a pro-Russian government, and directly threaten Russian national security.
Certainly the Americans and the British had supported these NGOs, and the consultants who were now managing the campaigns of some of the pro-Western candidates in Ukraine had formerly managed elections in the United States. Western money from multiple sources clearly was going into the country, but from the American point of view, there was nothing covert or menacing in any of this. The United States was simply doing what it had done since the fall of the Berlin Wall: working with democratic groups to build democracies.
This is where the United States and Russia profoundly parted company. Ukraine was divided between pro-Russian and anti-Russian factions, but the Americans merely saw themselves as supporting democrats. That the factions seen as democratic by the Americans were also the ones that were anti-Russian was, for the Americans, incidental.
For the Russians, it was not incidental. They had vivid memories of the containment policy the United States had long practiced vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, only now the container appeared smaller, tighter, and far more dangerous. They saw U.S. actions as a deliberate attempt to make Russia indefensible and as an encroachment on vital Russian interests in the Caucasus, a region in which the United States already had a bilateral agreement with Georgia.
Containment was indeed the American strategy, of course, however benignly it was expressed. The fundamental American interest is always the balance of power, and having refrained from trying to destroy the Russian Federation in the 1990s, the United States moved to create a regional balance in 2004, with Ukraine as its foundation and with the clear intent to include most of the former Soviet Union countries in this counterweight to Russian power.
Russian fears were compounded when they saw what the United States was doing in Central Asia. Even so, when the United States decided in the wake of September 11 to bring down the Taliban government in Afghanistan quickly, the Russians cooperated in two ways. First, they provided access to the Northern Alliance, a pro-Russian faction going back to the Russian occupation and the civil war that followed it. Second, Russia used its influence to obtain air and ground bases in the three countries bordering Afghanistan—Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan—from which the United States could support its invasion forces. Russia also granted flight privileges over its territory, which was extremely useful for travel from the West Coast or Europe.
It was Russia’s understanding that these bases in the bordering countries were temporary, but after three years, the Americans showed no signs of leaving anytime soon. In the interim the invasion of Iraq had taken place, over Russian objections, and the United States was now bogged down in what was clearly a long-term occupation. It was also heavily involved in Ukraine and Georgia and was building a major presence in Central Asia. Whereas these actions might not seem so harmful to Moscow’s interests when viewed individually, taken together they looked like a concerted effort to strangle Russia.
In particular, the U.S. presence in Georgia could be seen only as a deliberate provocation, because Georgia bordered on the Russian region of Chechnya. The Russians feared that if Chechnya seceded from the Russian Federation, the entire structure would disintegrate as others followed its lead. Chechnya is also located on the extreme northern slope of the Caucasus, and Russian power had already retreated hundreds of miles from its original frontiers deep in those mountains. If the Russians retreated any farther, they would be out of the Caucasus entirely, on flat ground that is hard to defend. Moreover, a significant oil pipeline went through Grozny, the Chechnyan capital, and its loss (although it is currently inoperative due to Chechnyan sabotage) would have a significant impact on the Russian energy export strategy.
Going back to the 1990s, the Russians believed that the Georgians were permitting a flow of weapons into Chechnya through what was called the Pankisi Gorge. They also believed that the United States, which had Special Forces advisers in Georgia, was at best doing nothing to stop the traffic and at worst encouraging it.
Proceeding from its core policy, the United States was trying to build friendships in the region, especially in Georgia, but it was obvious to all that the U.S. was no longer capable of serious power projection. It still had naval and air power in reserve, but on the ground its forces were tapped out in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This was significant enough psychologically, but then the Iraq war created a huge political effect as well. The split that developed between the United States and France and Germany over Iraq, and the general European antipathy toward the Bush administration, meant that Germany in particular was far less inclined than it had been to support American plans for NATO expansion or confrontations with Russia. In addition, the Russians had made Germany dependent on Russian natural gas by supplying nearly half of Germany’s needs, so the Germans were in no position to seek confrontation. The combination of military imbalance and diplomatic tension severely limited American options, yet by habit the United States continued to try to increase its influence.
In his state-of-the-nation address on April 25, 2005, Putin declared the fall of the Soviet Union to be the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” This was his public announcement that he intended to act to reverse some of the consequences of that fall. While Russia was no longer a global power, within the region it was—absent the United States—overwhelmingly powerful. Given the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States was now absent. In light of this, Putin moved to increase the capability of his military. He also moved to strengthen his regime by increasing revenues from commodity exports, a fortuitous decision given the rise of commodity prices. He used the intelligence capabilities of the FSB and SVR, heirs to the KGB, to identify and control key figures in the former Soviet Union. Since most had been politically active under the Soviet regime, they were either former Communists or at least well known to the FSB from their files. Everyone has vulnerabilities, and Putin used his strongest resource to exploit those weaknesses.
In August 2008, the Georgian government, for reasons that have never been completely clear, attacked South Ossetia. Once part of Georgia, this region had broken away and had been effectively independent since the 1990s, and it was allied with Russia. Putin responded as if Russia had been expecting the attack: he struck back within hours, defeating the Georgian army and occupying part of that country.
The main point of the attack was to demonstrate that Russia could still project power. The Russian army had collapsed in the 1990s, and Putin needed to dispel the perception that it was no longer relevant. But he also wanted to demonstrate to the countries of the former Soviet Union that American friendship and guarantees had no meaning. It was a small attack against a small nation, but a strike against a nation that had drawn very close to the United States. The operation stunned both the region and eastern Europe, as did the lack of an American response, along with the effective indifference of the Europeans. U.S. inaction, limited to diplomatic notes, drove home the fact that America was far away and Russia was very close, and as long as the United States continued to commit its ground forces to the Middle East, its inability to act would persist. Russian supporters in Ukraine, aided by Russian intelligence, began the process of reversing the results of the Orange Revolution. In 2010, elections replaced the pro-Western government with the man whom the Orange Revolution had overthrown.
By moving too slowly, the United States allowed the Russians to regain their balance, just as the U.S. was losing its own strategic balance in Iraq. At the very moment that it needed to concentrate power on the Russian periphery to lock into place its containment system, the United States had its forces elsewhere, and its alliances in Europe were too weak to be meaningful. It is to avoid such missteps and missed opportunities that the American president will need to adopt a new and more consistent strategy in the decade ahead.
THE REEMERGENCE OF RUSSIA
In the long run, Russia is a weak country. Putin’s strategy of focusing on energy production and export is a superb short-term tool, but it works only if it forms the basis for major economic expansion. To achieve this larger objective, Russia has to deal with its underlying structural weaknesses, yet these weaknesses are rooted in geographical problems that are not readily overcome.
Unlike much of the industrial world, Russia has both a relatively small population for its size and a population that is highly dispersed, tied together by little more than a security apparatus and a common culture.
Even the major cities, such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, are not the centers of a giant megalopolis. They are stand-alone entities, separated from each other by vast distances of farmland and forest. Leaving apart the fact that the Russian population is in decline, the current distribution of population makes a modern economy, or even efficient distribution of food, difficult, if not impossible. The infrastructure connecting farming areas to the city is poor, as is the infrastructure connecting industrial and commercial centers.
The problem in connectivity stems from the fact that Russia’s rivers go the wrong way. Unlike American rivers, which connect farming country to ports where food can be distributed, Russian rivers merely create barriers. Neither the czars and their railway bonds nor Stalin with his enforced starvation ever came close to overcoming the problem, and the cost of building a connective tissue for the Russian economy—extensive rail systems and roads—remains staggering. Russia has always wielded a military force that outstripped its economy, but it cannot do so forever.
Russian Population Density
Russia must concentrate on the short term while it has the twin advantages of German dependence on its energy and America’s distraction in the Middle East. It must try to create lasting structures—some of them domestic, some foreign—that can hold together even in the face of economic limitations.
The domestic structure is already emerging, with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan having reached agreement on an economic union and now discussing a common currency. Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan have expressed interest in joining in, and Russia has floated the idea of Ukraine joining as well. This is a relationship that will evolve into a political union of some sort, like the European Union, an alignment that will go far in re-creating the central features of the former Soviet Union.
The international structure Russia needs is perhaps more important and problematic. It begins with a relationship with Europe, particularly Germany. Russia needs access to technology, which the Germans have in abundance, while Germany needs access to Russian natural resources. Germany fought two wars to get hold of these resources but failed. Its interest in these resources has not diminished, but its means are now diplomatic rather than military. The desire to exploit this complementary relationship will be at the heart of Russian strategy during the next ten years.
Germany is the driving force of the European Union, which, as we will see, carries with it unexpected burdens. Germany has little interest in American operations in the Middle East and no interest whatever in expanding NATO, and with it American influence, to the Russian periphery. It wants to keep its distance from the United States, and it needs options other than the EU. Closer cooperation with Russia is not a bad idea from Germany’s point of view, and it is an outstanding idea from Russia’s point of view. Putin knows the Germans well enough to understand their fear and distrust of Russia. But he also knows them well enough to realize that they have outgrown the postwar world, are facing serious economic problems of their own, and need Russian resources.
The simultaneous reconstruction of a Russian-dominated sphere of influence and the creation of structural relations with Germany is an idea that Russia needs to push, and push quickly, since time is not on its side. It must convince Germany that it can be a reliable partner without taking any steps to disrupt the EU or Germany’s relations with it. These developments will be a ballet backed by real, if transitory, power.
To have any chance for maneuvering in the coming years, Russia must split the United States from Europe. At the same time, it will do everything it can to keep the United States bogged down in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, if possible, Iran. From the Russian point of view, the U.S.-jihadist war is like Vietnam: it relieves Russia of the burden of dealing with the American military, and it actually makes the Americans dependent on Russian cooperation in measures such as imposing sanctions on countries like Iran. The Russians can play the Americans indefinitely by threatening to ship weapons to anti-American groups and to countries such as Iran and Syria. This locks the United States in place, trying to entice the Russians when in fact the only thing the Russians want the Americans to do is to remain permanently bogged down in the war.