They didn’t teach vision they taught method at the KGB. After all, the KGB was an instrument of power
not the power itself. That changed, of
course, when one of their own, Vladimir Putin, became prime minister of Russia.
You have to admire the KGB.
They did their work well. Putin
doesn’t waste time worrying about the big picture. If anything Russia’s decline is accelerating—the
economy is sliding, its international standing is in tatters, and civil society
is dead. But, if Putin knows anything,
it is method. The slow, patient
cultivation of incremental advantage.
The secret of method is simple. In short, if you are prepared to think about
something for 15 minutes more than the other guy, you’ve probably got the edge
because you will be better prepared to anticipate that guy’s next move and figure
out how you will respond in turn. And,
you are always in the position to take the initiative.
In The Art of Strategy,
Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff summarize it this way,
“The general principle for sequential move games is that each player
should figure out the other players’ future responses and use them in
calculating his own best current move.
This idea is so important that it is worth codifying into a basic rule of
strategic behavior.”
Nothing went the way Putin wanted in Ukraine. He’d rather have kept Yanukovych. The invasion of eastern Ukraine didn’t turn
out so hot. Using it to prevent Ukraine
getting closer to Europe hasn’t paid off so far--they’re closer than ever. And Crimea has turned out to be an albatross
around the neck of the Russian economy. But Putin
is still in the game because one thing he knows how to do is keep his
adversaries off balance. Method.
So, with Putin it works like this.
First, think several steps ahead. Putin is widely reported to have had plans to
retake Crimea for years and to have decided to seize it as early as December
2013, well before Yanukovych fell from power.
To do that he had to weaken the Ukrainian government so that it could
not respond and position in advance the resources necessary to take Crimea, all
of which was in place well before the Maidan demonstrations.
Second, take the initiative, act first. If there is one word that continually comes
up in the press to define the West’s response to Putin’s aggression it is
“wrong-footed.” Throughout the crisis,
Putin has taken the initiative and surprised his opponents. The shift to Syria and bombing the moderate
opposition in Syria rather than ISIL is just the latest example.
Third, while your opponent is digesting your last move, execute your next one. Also, a recurring
experience. While the West hummed with
indignation over Russia’s seizing Crimea, Putin’s agents undermined eastern
Ukraine. While Ukraine focused on
retaking eastern Ukraine, Putin invaded south toward Mariupol. While the West digested the sudden calm in eastern
Ukraine, Putin seized the initiative in Syria.
Fourth, eschew conventional wisdom. Putin does not let “sensible” behavior define
his actions. He focuses rather on the
gaps or vacuums left by others. The fall
of Yanukovych opened the door to seizing Crimea, a high-risk initiative but one
that the Ukrainian government—and the West—was unprepared to counter. Conventional wisdom would say that ramping up military
support for Assad, whose back is to the wall and will never regain legitimacy, is
a bad, high-risk idea. It might still
be. But Putin saw opportunity in the
vacuum that the West and Arab World left when they failed to come up with a
game plan to halt either Assad or ISIL and to end the Syrian conflict.
Fifth, give your opponent no time to react. Putin moves in rapid succession. Putin decided to seize Crimea at an all night
meeting in the Kremlin on February 22, 2014.
On February 23 pro-Russian demonstrations began in Sevastopol, and on
February 27 Russian troops seized the first Crimean government buildings. All in a week’s work. Putin needed parliamentary approval for
military action in Syria. Within 48
hours he had it, and Russian planes undertook their first air strike on Homs.
Sixth--need it be said--exploit you opponent’s weaknesses.
Early in the Ukrainian crisis, the US
and leading countries in Western Europe, announced they would not use force to
counter Russian aggression. That left
the door open for Putin to risk limited military action to achieve his
goals. The West has also been clear that
it would not invoke sanctions sufficient to collapse the Russian economy, such
as locking Russia out of SWIFT or blocking short-term Western finance, thus allowing
Putin to believe that he just might ride out the economic consequences of his
aggression. In a sense, Putin is more
interested in what the West will not do than he is in what it will do, because
that is where opportunity lies.
If there is a core to Putin’s method, it is this; the path
to success is in many, small steps. He
needs to keep moving forward but without invoking a massive response, just a
small, continuing erosion of his opponent’s credibility. Again, Dixit and Nalebuff,
“…you
can try to destroy the credibility of an opponent’s threat by going against his
wishes in small steps. Each step should
be so small in relation to the threatened costly action that it is not in the
interests of the other to invoke it.”
None of Putin’s actions have resulted in the overwhelming
response from the world community that would halt his aggression, but the drum
beat of his actions is eroding confidence in the principles and stability of
the global system. The West has followed
a policy of incremental responses designed to dissuade Putin but not to compel him to stop. The game is one of endurance,
and Putin believes that the West’s credibility will erode before he has to face
the consequences of his misspent efforts.
So, now the “Normandy Four” (Ukraine, Germany France and Russia) met in Paris on Friday and Minsk
II seems to be back on track. There will
be elections in eastern Ukraine under Ukrainian law. They’ll just be a few months later. Game over at last?
As the meeting in Paris took place, the OSCE monitoring
group discovered for the first time in separatist-held territory advanced “thermobaric” missile systems. At the same
time, of the four parties to Friday’s Minsk II discussions, the only one who
has not had anything to say about the outcome is Putin.
Go ahead, take 15 minutes to ask yourself, what next?
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