Photo Credit: Euromaidan Press
As airstrikes resume in Aleppo
after a brief pause, Putin seems to be on the verge of another tactical success
and to hold the fate of Aleppo in his hands.
Yet Putin would have preferred that Syrian forces had already taken Aleppo. Syrian forces, Iranian Guards and Hezbollah
fighters have failed to sew up a clear win over tenacious rebel forces. In addition, even if Aleppo now falls, Russia
will pay a high price for success because it will require carpet-bombing
reminiscent of Putin’s conquest of Grozny during the second Chechen war. The West is already united in condemning
Russia’s barbarism in Syria and further brutality will have unpredictable
consequences for Russia (even if the EU failed at its meeting on October 20 to
threaten sanctions).
In fact, Putin finds himself where
he has been before.
His successes are not victories and
they cost more than they are worth. There
is a pattern here. Putin’s tactical
successes to date do not translate into strategic gains due to his penchant for
miscalculation. Consider each of Putin’s
supposed successes.
Putin hoped to gather a new
pan-Russian world under an Eurasian Economic Union, for which Ukraine was
key. He attempted to maneuver former
Ukrainian President Yanukovych into keeping Ukraine under Russian suzerainty,
including through bribes, threats and subversion of state institutions,
especially the military and security services.
Not only did Putin misjudge the resistance and strength of civil society
in Ukraine, his actions strengthened resistance to Russian dominance across all
the former Soviet Republics.
Putin attempted to base Russian
economic power on rents from resource extraction and a corrupt keptocracy, but
he misunderstood what drives a dynamic economy.
GDP growth slowed due to lack of investment and poor governance. Russia then plunged into economic crisis when
commodity prices collapsed in 2014 and sanctions were imposed on Russia for the
seizure of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. GDP feel 3.7% in 2015 and is expected to fall
1% in 2016. Russia is currently running
a budget deficit that may reach or exceed 4% this year, putting an enormous
strain on social spending, including all-important public sector salaries and pensions
upon which a large share of the population depends and upon which his support is
based. Even the modernization program
for the military, with which Putin hopes to project Russian power, is subject
to budget cuts. GDP growth is projected
to be nearly stagnant into the foreseeable future, without deep economic and
governance reforms, and the Russian Economic Ministry projects no change in
Russians’ living standard before 2035.
Reputedly, when deciding to seize
Crimea, Putin asked his advisors if Russia could weather a year of adverse international
reaction. Putin mistakenly believed that
the West was so dependent on Russian energy and so weakened by economic and
political disarray--encouraged in part by Russia--that it could not sustain diplomatic
opposition to Russia’s land grab for longer.
Putin appears not to have anticipated the scale of sanctions that were
imposed by the US and the EU. Nearly three
years later, international isolation and the prospect of continuing sanctions
looks only stronger due to lack of progress on a settlement in eastern Ukraine
and events in Syria. Meanwhile, Russia
continues to bleed resources to sustain Crimea and Russian-backed eastern
Ukraine, as well as conduct military operations in Syria.
Buoyed by the first flush of
success when seizing Crimea, Putin attempted to take control of the east and
south of Ukraine through Odesa to the Moldovan border, calling it “Novorossiya.” The people did not rally to Russia as
expected, and Russian provocateurs and local agents who attempted to seize
control of the region were overwhelmed.
Russia had to send in “unmarked” regular troops and armor to stop the
Ukrainian military advance in eastern Ukraine.
The price in dead Russians and diplomatic fallout became too high and
Putin was beaten to a standstill. During
the course of the conflict, Russia and/or its proxies committed an act of international
terrorism by shooting down a civilian aircraft, MH17, killing nearly 300
persons. A Dutch-led investigation released
in September 2016 confirmed Russian involvement and the identification, and
possible prosecution, of guilty Russian military and political leaders is
expected in the future.
Putin pivoted to Syria, looking for
new leverage over the West. In Syria,
Putin believed he had seized the initiative from a feeble EU and American
response to the crisis, while avoiding an Afghanistan-like quagmire by relying
solely on airpower to support the Syrian army, Iranian Guards and Hezbollah
fighters. And, indeed, the West looked
flatfooted and outmaneuvered. But the
Syrian army proved unable to make the gains that Russia expected. Russian Special Forces and “irregulars”, as
well as barbaric methods, had to be added to sustain gains. Putin was compelled to add support for a
campaign to take Aleppo. As of this
writing, the combined pro-government forces have yet to take the city. In the meantime, the brutality of the campaign
has alienated the EU, which condemned Russian supported bombing and threatened
prosecutions for war crimes. Rather than
gaining leverage over the West, Russia finds itself even more isolated.
Meanwhile, Russian hacking of the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) and others is disruptive but has given the US new resolve
to confront unconventional Russian interference and aggression. The US has promised a firm and unmistakable
response. Ecuador cut Julian Assange,
the Wikileaks founder who is believed to be working hand-in-hand with Russia,
off from the Internet on suspicion of interfering in the US election, and the
Russian news service, RT, accused of propaganda, had its bank accounts frozen
in the UK. If Russia had hoped to
undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, it failed miserably. Russia’s capacity to be disruptive will now
be confronted by firm US and European counter-measures.
Even if one steps back and looks at
Putin’s probable strategic objective of a West too weak and in disarray to
counter Russia’s interests, it is not clear Putin is making any headway. Discord in Europe is the result of homegrown
political mismanagement and of events elsewhere, such as Syria, that Putin can
only hope to exploit but not control.
Even where Russia has had an outsized influence, such as using illicit
money and offshore financial centers to corrupt Western elites, the window is
closing after numerous revelations, including the Panama Papers and Spanish
indictments of Russian mobsters and serving political figures. Everyone is now alert to Russia’s corrosive
influence. That elites can be corrupted
or that institutions can be undermined is not an insight that Putin alone has. Europe and the US understand it also and can
be effective in confronting it. In
short, what the Soviet Union could not do, Russia cannot do either. Although
Putin has managed to elevate Russia’s profile on the international stage, its
standing is fragile because Russia’s role is seen as more disruptive than
constructive.
Putin may deflect, feint, cut his
loses, and pivot to a new provocation to distract from his failure to translate
tactical successes into strategic gains, but the costs are mounting and his
opportunities are narrowing.
Fundamentally, Putin cannot overturn global leadership on the foundation
of political deceit and corruption, nor on militant nationalism. Lack of political credibility and corruption
through which Putin hopes to undermine the West are more deeply rooted in
Russia. And militant
nationalism—especially if based on ethnicity--is a formula for catastrophe,
whether in Nazi Germany, post-Yugoslavia Serbia or contemporary Russia.
Although it has been touched on by
policy analysts at times, Putin’s personality is an underestimated weakness
that contributes to his penchant for miscalculation. Putin is not fully aware of how the most
human of qualities, “empathy”, informs judgment and, therefore, he does not understand how it affects political decisions. Much like Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock
Holmes character in the hit series “Sherlock,” Putin is oblivious to societal
norms because he is a “high-functioning sociopath.” He recognizes societal norms based on empathy,
such as aversion to doing harm and sympathy for those who suffer or are less
fortunate, but he does not feel it, and because he doesn’t feel it he is suspicious
and contemptuous of it. He personally expresses little sympathy and evidences no effort to comfort those
who suffer in Donbas or for the horror in Syria or the increasingly difficult
circumstances of the Russian people, except at the abstract level of strategic
policy when he condemns the actions of others that he perceives are directed
against Russian power. Putin perceives Western leaders' concern for the impact of their actions on people as weakness.
Putin is not only
indifferent to causing harm, he is personally culpable.
Putin is strongly implicated in “terrorist” attacks that killed hundreds
of Russian citizens in 1999 that propelled him into the Presidency on a law and
order platform. Military and security
services under his command are also implicated in provocations in 1999 that
launched the second Chechen war that killed tens of thousands. Putin is believed to be responsible for the
deaths of countless opponents, including investigative journalist Anna
Politkovskaya and whistleblower Alexander Litvinenko whom a British Public
Inquiry concluded had been murdered on orders by Putin personally. The imprisonment--and torture--in Russia of
numerous Ukrainian citizens, including Ukrainian pilot, Nadiya Savchenko, could
not occur without Putin’s concurrence.
There are no checks on Putin’s behavior and deaths of ordinary Russians,
opponents, and citizens of other countries, do not bother him and so are not
part of his calculus of risk.
With less room to maneuver and an
increasingly fragile base on which to support his actions, Putin will
attempt further aggression. His current
bluster in Syria, moving missiles closer to the EU, and invading Finnish
airspace may be carefully calibrated to convey threat without risking direct confrontation,
but Putin’s hubris and inability to empathize mean that he will overreach yet
again, and at some point his luck will collide with his penchant for
miscalculation, and he will experience a categorical tactical failure. At that point, rather than be unmasked as
fallible, Putin will attempt to reverse his failure, possibly up to and
including through a tactical nuclear “event” (not necessarily, but possibly,
involving an actual limited strike). With the smoke and mirrors removed, Putin
will be revealed to be, like Stalin, a plague on Russia and the world.
