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COUNTERING PUTIN'S GRAND STRATEGY
Wall Street Journal, NY
Feb 12 2015
With Europe weak and distracted, only the U.S. can thwart the Kremlin's
growing ambitions.
By Robert D. Kaplan Feb. 11, 2015 7:20 p.m. ET
The heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine this week isn't the only reason
to be skeptical about the prospects for the peace summit that began
Wednesday in Minsk, Belarus. Even if the meeting among Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Puti n, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande
produces a cease-fire agreement that holds up--unlike the one signed
last fall--the conflict's underlying reality will remain unchanged:
The Russian-backed separatist revolt in eastern Ukraine is part of
Moscow's larger grand strategy.
President Putin, who is consumed by historical humiliations, knows that
Russia was invaded not only by Napoleon and Hitler, but before that
also by the Swedes, Poles and Lithuanians. And so the Russian president
seeks a post-Warsaw Pact buffer zone in Central and Eastern Europe. The
Kremlin play book: imperialism by way of forcing energy dependence,
intelligence operations, criminal rackets, buying infrastructure and
media through third parties, the bribing of local politicians and
playing off the insecurities of ethnic minorities.
Mr. Putin may be an autocrat, but he finds weak democracies convenient
to his purpose. Their frail institutional and rule-of-law regimes make
his favored forms of subversion easier. Thus, Moldova, Bulgaria and
Serbia are particularly at risk while Romania, a member of the European
Union since 2007 and far more stable than Bulgaria, is less so.
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Mr. Putin has a North European Plain strategy in the Baltic states and
Poland, which emphasizes dependence on natural gas and the manipulation
of Russian minorities in the Baltic states. He also has a Black Sea
strategy, as seen in his annexation of Crimea last year, his desire
for a land bridge between Crimea and separatist eastern Ukraine,
his military pressure on Georgia, and his friendship with Turkey's
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan--it all advances Russian influence in
the adjacent Balkans, thus inside Europe.
Western sanctions against Russia and the weakening of the Russian
currency (because of the fall in oil prices) may constrain Mr. Putin
a bit, but Russian history reveals a strong tendency for hardship
at home and adventurism abroad. Dialing up nationalism amid economic
turmoil is the default option for autocrats.
Matching Russia's multifaceted imperialism requires a multifaceted
U.S. counterstrategy: the coordinated use of sufficient military aid,
intelligence operations, electronic surveillance, economic sanctions,
information and cyberwarfare, and legal steps. The Obama administration
is already pursuing in part such a strategy, but without the intensity
and commitment necessary for success. This isn't about going to war,
but about making Russia respect limits.
The Obama administration should intensify economic sanctions that
further squeeze Russia's ability to do business with U.S. banks; help
allies build liquefied natural-gas terminals to reduce dependence
on Russian energy; offer more tools to allies to help them defend
against Russian cyberattacks; and launch a full-bore effort to get
Ukraine to strengthen its military and other institutions--call it
nation-building lite.
Other measures might include inviting recently elected Romanian
President Klaus Iohannis and other deserving Central and Eastern
European leaders on state visits to Washington, an increased tempo of
bilateral military exercises with allies bordering Russia, and offering
our friends more intelligence against Russian criminal organizations.
Above all, U.S. policy makers should understand that NATO's Article
5--specifying that an armed attack against one member state will be
considered an attack on all members--doesn't protect members against
Russian subversion from within. Thus supporting Ukraine militarily
means first getting the Kiev government and its fighting forces to
modernize by, among other things, embedding experts from NATO and
other organizations inside Ukrainian ministries and army units. Only
then will the Ukrainian military be able to absorb the extra arms
its allies should want to give it. This is the narrative Washington
needs to create. Ukraine's best defense against Russia is to become
more of a viable Westernized state itself.
But there is another problem: Europe. The EU bureaucracy doesn't want
to absorb the troubles of Ukraine's 45 million people with their
corrupt institutions, and neither do most NATO member states. The
European appetite for helping Ukraine has not measured up to Russia's
appetite for destabilizing it. The problem cannot be decoupled from
Europe's own inability, despite its recently launched version of
quantitative easing, to deal decisively with the EU's flatlining
economy. The bitter European truth is that not enough individual
countries will sacrifice for each other. So why should they sacrifice
for Ukraine?
Thus the U.S., in addition to dealing with an assertive yet
economically crumbling Russia, must also cope with a spineless Europe.
To defeat Russia's geopolitical ambitions, U.S. strategy should
concentrate on protecting and fortifying what the Polish general and
patriot of the interwar era, Jozef Pilsudsk i, called the Intermarium
(Latin for "between the seas," between the Baltic and Black seas,
that is). Pilsudski envisioned a belt of independent states stretching
from Estonia south to Bulgaria that could withstand Russian aggression
from the east and German aggression from the west.
But because Chancellor Angela Merkel's Germany is such a benign and
conflicted power, even as Mr. Putin seeks to expand influence into
the old Soviet Union, the Intermarium must now extend from the Baltics
to the Caucasus, where the Russian strongman, in addition to putting
military pressure on Georgia, has made Armenia a virtual satellite
hosting thousands of Russian troops.
This means oil-rich Azerbaijan, its sorry human-rights record
notwithstanding, is a pivot state, along with Poland in northeastern
Europe and Romania in southeastern Europe. The recent flare-up in
fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory
of Nagorno-Karabakh provides Russia even greater opportunities for
exerting influence, given that Moscow has armed both sides.
Meanwhile, Mr. Putin's vision of an ever-enlarging separatist Ukraine
corresponds with what he has already achieved in Russian-occupied
Transnistria, a sliver of land virtually annexed from Moldova in the
early 1990s, where he has fashioned a murky smugglers' paradise; 2,500
Russian troops are stationed there. Transnistria could be the future
of Ukraine if Mr. Obama doesn't act. With Europe weak and distracted,
and Mr. Putin stoking nationalism in the midst of an economic crisis at
home, only the U.S. can be the organizing principle for strengthening
the Intermarium.
Mr. Kaplan, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security,
is the author of, among other books, "The Revenge of Geography: What
the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate"
(Random House, 2012).
http://www.wsj.com/articles/robert-d-kaplan-countering-putins-grand-strategy-1423700448
Wall Street Journal, NY
Feb 12 2015
With Europe weak and distracted, only the U.S. can thwart the Kremlin's
growing ambitions.
By Robert D. Kaplan Feb. 11, 2015 7:20 p.m. ET
The heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine this week isn't the only reason
to be skeptical about the prospects for the peace summit that began
Wednesday in Minsk, Belarus. Even if the meeting among Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Puti n, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande
produces a cease-fire agreement that holds up--unlike the one signed
last fall--the conflict's underlying reality will remain unchanged:
The Russian-backed separatist revolt in eastern Ukraine is part of
Moscow's larger grand strategy.
President Putin, who is consumed by historical humiliations, knows that
Russia was invaded not only by Napoleon and Hitler, but before that
also by the Swedes, Poles and Lithuanians. And so the Russian president
seeks a post-Warsaw Pact buffer zone in Central and Eastern Europe. The
Kremlin play book: imperialism by way of forcing energy dependence,
intelligence operations, criminal rackets, buying infrastructure and
media through third parties, the bribing of local politicians and
playing off the insecurities of ethnic minorities.
Mr. Putin may be an autocrat, but he finds weak democracies convenient
to his purpose. Their frail institutional and rule-of-law regimes make
his favored forms of subversion easier. Thus, Moldova, Bulgaria and
Serbia are particularly at risk while Romania, a member of the European
Union since 2007 and far more stable than Bulgaria, is less so.
Advertisement
Mr. Putin has a North European Plain strategy in the Baltic states and
Poland, which emphasizes dependence on natural gas and the manipulation
of Russian minorities in the Baltic states. He also has a Black Sea
strategy, as seen in his annexation of Crimea last year, his desire
for a land bridge between Crimea and separatist eastern Ukraine,
his military pressure on Georgia, and his friendship with Turkey's
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan--it all advances Russian influence in
the adjacent Balkans, thus inside Europe.
Western sanctions against Russia and the weakening of the Russian
currency (because of the fall in oil prices) may constrain Mr. Putin
a bit, but Russian history reveals a strong tendency for hardship
at home and adventurism abroad. Dialing up nationalism amid economic
turmoil is the default option for autocrats.
Matching Russia's multifaceted imperialism requires a multifaceted
U.S. counterstrategy: the coordinated use of sufficient military aid,
intelligence operations, electronic surveillance, economic sanctions,
information and cyberwarfare, and legal steps. The Obama administration
is already pursuing in part such a strategy, but without the intensity
and commitment necessary for success. This isn't about going to war,
but about making Russia respect limits.
The Obama administration should intensify economic sanctions that
further squeeze Russia's ability to do business with U.S. banks; help
allies build liquefied natural-gas terminals to reduce dependence
on Russian energy; offer more tools to allies to help them defend
against Russian cyberattacks; and launch a full-bore effort to get
Ukraine to strengthen its military and other institutions--call it
nation-building lite.
Other measures might include inviting recently elected Romanian
President Klaus Iohannis and other deserving Central and Eastern
European leaders on state visits to Washington, an increased tempo of
bilateral military exercises with allies bordering Russia, and offering
our friends more intelligence against Russian criminal organizations.
Above all, U.S. policy makers should understand that NATO's Article
5--specifying that an armed attack against one member state will be
considered an attack on all members--doesn't protect members against
Russian subversion from within. Thus supporting Ukraine militarily
means first getting the Kiev government and its fighting forces to
modernize by, among other things, embedding experts from NATO and
other organizations inside Ukrainian ministries and army units. Only
then will the Ukrainian military be able to absorb the extra arms
its allies should want to give it. This is the narrative Washington
needs to create. Ukraine's best defense against Russia is to become
more of a viable Westernized state itself.
But there is another problem: Europe. The EU bureaucracy doesn't want
to absorb the troubles of Ukraine's 45 million people with their
corrupt institutions, and neither do most NATO member states. The
European appetite for helping Ukraine has not measured up to Russia's
appetite for destabilizing it. The problem cannot be decoupled from
Europe's own inability, despite its recently launched version of
quantitative easing, to deal decisively with the EU's flatlining
economy. The bitter European truth is that not enough individual
countries will sacrifice for each other. So why should they sacrifice
for Ukraine?
Thus the U.S., in addition to dealing with an assertive yet
economically crumbling Russia, must also cope with a spineless Europe.
To defeat Russia's geopolitical ambitions, U.S. strategy should
concentrate on protecting and fortifying what the Polish general and
patriot of the interwar era, Jozef Pilsudsk i, called the Intermarium
(Latin for "between the seas," between the Baltic and Black seas,
that is). Pilsudski envisioned a belt of independent states stretching
from Estonia south to Bulgaria that could withstand Russian aggression
from the east and German aggression from the west.
But because Chancellor Angela Merkel's Germany is such a benign and
conflicted power, even as Mr. Putin seeks to expand influence into
the old Soviet Union, the Intermarium must now extend from the Baltics
to the Caucasus, where the Russian strongman, in addition to putting
military pressure on Georgia, has made Armenia a virtual satellite
hosting thousands of Russian troops.
This means oil-rich Azerbaijan, its sorry human-rights record
notwithstanding, is a pivot state, along with Poland in northeastern
Europe and Romania in southeastern Europe. The recent flare-up in
fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory
of Nagorno-Karabakh provides Russia even greater opportunities for
exerting influence, given that Moscow has armed both sides.
Meanwhile, Mr. Putin's vision of an ever-enlarging separatist Ukraine
corresponds with what he has already achieved in Russian-occupied
Transnistria, a sliver of land virtually annexed from Moldova in the
early 1990s, where he has fashioned a murky smugglers' paradise; 2,500
Russian troops are stationed there. Transnistria could be the future
of Ukraine if Mr. Obama doesn't act. With Europe weak and distracted,
and Mr. Putin stoking nationalism in the midst of an economic crisis at
home, only the U.S. can be the organizing principle for strengthening
the Intermarium.
Mr. Kaplan, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security,
is the author of, among other books, "The Revenge of Geography: What
the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate"
(Random House, 2012).
http://www.wsj.com/articles/robert-d-kaplan-countering-putins-grand-strategy-1423700448