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Russian ambitions are making a fight more likely

A colleague whom I respect suggests President Putin’s force mobilization on Ukraine’s border has little to do with Ukraine or Russian domestic politics. He thinks It could be Putin’s effort to reassert Russia’s claim to a seat at the “high table” with the US and China. The US looks weak in the aftermath of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Trump. So Putin wants to seize the day to re-establish Russia as indispensable to global decisionmaking.

What does this perspective suggest about ways to defuse the current situation?

The facts

President Obama suggested Russia was a middling regional power. This is in many respects numerically true. Russia has an economy about the size of Brazil’s that is wholly dependent on oil and gas exports. Its population is old and declining, both in numbers and life expectancy. Its people, who include not only Russians but lots of mistreated minorities, are mostly beyond discontent and just seeking to get by.

But Moscow’s military forces are the fifth largest on earth and increasingly modernized (especially the air force). Its nuclear weapons are equal to those of the US. It is the largest country in the world by area. It has grown a sovereign wealth fund of over $620 billion. Russia’s extensive geography places it more or less contiguous to important places: the Arctic, the European Union, the Black Sea, the Gulf, Central Asia, and China. Russia has also managed to project its reach to Venezuela, Cuba, Libya, Mali, and other places in Africa.

So Russia is not Brazil, but it is not China either.

The history

The US was not unkind to Russia after the Cold War. Washington harbored hopes Moscow would no longer relish the role of adversary but rather join the Western “world order.” Russia kept the Soviet Union’s UN Security Council permanent membership, with a veto. NATO and Russia established a Permanent Joint Council intended to end hostility between the Alliance and Moscow. Russia joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace. Commitments made to the Soviets were initially maintained, until George W. Bush started dismantling them in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Moscow for much of the past decade has been on a tear. In Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine Russian forces have established de facto puppet regimes in territory where Russian speakers are the majority. Moscow used force to reclaim and annex Crimea. Russian forces have found their way not only to Armenia but also to Azerbaijan and most of the ‘stans, not to mention Belarus. Russia has threatened non-NATO members Finland and Sweden, undermined NATO members Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (all former Soviet possessions), and tried by nefarious means to block NATO membership for Macedonia and Montenegro.

Is there a way?

No wonder Washington has been seeking to reset relations with Russia. Moscow has put its price on the table. It wants American acceptance, in a legally binding document, of Russian hegemony in the former Soviet republics not yet NATO members. And it wants limits on NATO’s presence in its newer member states. This would amount to acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence, making the newer member states buffers between Russia and what we used to call Western Europe. NATO would abandon the ambition of Europe “whole and free,” at least for now.

There may be some other way. After all, the Russians knew when presenting their maximum demands that they would not be acceptable. Europe whole and free has long been out of reach. NATO could clarify that there are no current plans for accession of Ukraine, which is true. Some force limitations in eastern Europe are possible too, provided they are reciprocal. Upgrading the NATO-Russia Council is conceivable. So too is more bilateral consultation with Russia.

But Russian ambitions exceed all those moves. The odds of a fight are increasing by the day.