Month: March 2022
Stevenson’s army, March 14
– Talks and fighting over Ukraine.
– WSJ says US won’t exempt Russia from sanctions to save Iran deal.
– Various sources say Russia has asked China for military aid.
– NYT assesses how the war might end.
– WaPO reports return of earmarks.
– SAIS & WIlson Center have upcoming event on Ukraine & the Balkans.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Lament of the Ukrainians won’t stop soon
We all needed that. But the reality is grim. Over 2 million Ukrainians are now refugees. Many more are internally displaced. Russia has expanded and intensified its attacks in western Ukraine. They are also pounding Kharkiv in the northeast and Mariupol in the south, having already captured Kherson. Only a determined stand at Mykolaiv is preventing an assault on Odesa. The Russians all but surround Kyiv:
Courage v criminality
The Ukrainians have proven courageous, agile, and stalwart. The Russian army has demonstrated clumsy logistical incompetence. It has also targeted civilian areas, proving its criminal intent. But no one should be fooled. If this goes on much longer, Russia will occupy a destroyed country whose population will mount a ferocious resistance against brutality.
NATO defanged
NATO is standing by, reluctant to intervene because doing so might trigger a wider war as well as escalation between the US and Russia. Alliance members have been sending massive war supplies to Ukraine, which is why the Russians are attacking military bases and airfields in the west. They are the reception areas for foreign assistance. Attacks there make a lot more strategic sense from the Russian perspective than pulverizing Ukraine’s cities.
I imagine there are circumstances in which NATO might intervene. Russian use of chemical weapons could trigger a cruise missile attack on whoever launches them. But such interventioins would be carefully limited and calculated not to generate escalation.
The future Russian occupation
Russia’s war against Ukraine looks a lot like its second war againsts Chechnya, when Putin gained credits for obliterating Grozny. But the post-war occupation isn’t going to be as generous. In Chechnya, Moscow rebuilt and installed a puppet government that rules with an iron fist. In Ukraine, Moscow will need to skip the rebuilding. Western sanctions will guarantee that it doesn’t have the money. The insurgency will require the puppet government to crack down even harder than in Chechnya. So even if the war ends soon, Ukrainians will not be able to return home. It will be unsafe for years, if not decades, to come.
Moscow has biten off more than it can chew
Russia is itself in bad shape and deteriorating. It has biten off more than it can chew. But there is no telling when Russians will decide they’ve had enough of Vladimir Putin and his delusional gang. Certainly the courageous protests so far don’t reach the rule of thumb for successful popular mobilizations: 3.5% of the population. But there are definitely courageous Russians speaking truth to power:
None of the oligarchs or the inner circle of former KGBers appears ready and willing to do what many of them must know would benefit most Russians. But we may not know they were willing until they do it.
Even then, the challenges for Ukraine will be gigantic. Russia should pay hundreds of billions of dollars in reparations for a war of aggression. It won’t be willing or able. The West will do its part, but the scale of reconstruction requirements will be daunting, even if Russia were to withdraw today. The lament of the Ukrainians won’t stop soon. They may not even be permitted to sing Verdi’s version for Hebrews for much longer:
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Slam the door shut on Open Balkans
Miodrag Vlahović is the former minister of foreign affairs of Montenegro and the first Montenegrin ambassador to Washington. He is now president of Montenegrin Helsinki Committee. He writes:
Russian aggression against Ukraine has provoked a dramatic change in the Western approach to Russia. Confrontation with Russia has re-united the Euro-Atlantic community and given a new raison d’etre to NATO. It will have profound effects in the Balkans too.
The EU and US have been failing
The Balkans have endured years of futile US diplomacy and ineffective EU efforts to move all six Western Balkan countries towards EU membership. The main reason for their poor results was their effort to appease Serbia. That modus operandi was particularly present during the Trump administration. The American bottom line was simple: economy will resolve all the other issues. Karl Marx would agree.
EU diplomacy in recent years entered the murky waters of of changing borders and territorial swaps on an ethnic basis. That process failed but evolved to a vague “Open Balkans” proposition. It ignores not only the existing Berlin Process for regional co-operation, but also the regional CEFTA framework for trade. It would give leadership in the region to Serbian President Vučić and Albanian Prime Minister Rama, encouraging their Greater Serbia and, consequently, Greater Albania ambitions.
The consequences are evident
As a consequence of this ineffective diplomacy, Western Balkan countries’ advance towards EU membership has stalled. Three (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Montenegro) have expressed serious reserves concerning the logic and potential effects of Open Balkans. Pro-EU Balkan politicians and civic activists think hard-line nationalism, emanating mainly from Belgrade, has caused serious degradation of regional security and stability.
Russian hybrid activities have contributed, as they have in many Western countries, the US included. Russian media and their outlets, combined with an orchestrated round-the-clock campaign of Belgrade-controlled media, have encouraged Serbian nationalism and its allies throughout the region.
Serbia has enjoyed “privileged status” in the West for years now. The US and EU hoped to “save” Vučić from Russia’s bear hug. Appeasment from the West allowed the step-by-step takeover of Serbia from the East.
Now things should change
This appeasement of Russia’s main client in the region is no longer a viable policy.
“Open Balkans,” supported by both the State Department and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, should end. It was leading the entire region off the EU track.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine requires prompt action in the Balkans:
- Accelerate EU membership negotiations as the first priority on the Euro-Atlantic Balkans agenda. The region should return to the “regatta principle,” that is EU accession on the merits of individual candidates.
- Provide a credible time-table for NATO accession of Kosovo as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina. The sooner, the better.
- Offer Serbia the same. Even if its internal politics and declared “neutrality” militate against NATO membership, the “open door” policy is crucial.
- Make Bosnia-Herzegovina a functioning, civic political system. Changes of election laws based on ethnic denominations will not help. The Dayton constitutional framework needs change.
- Revive the Berlin Process, especially cultural co-operation and educational programs. They are the best training for accession talks with EU.
- Promote civic and non-nationalist political forces and their leaders throughout the region.
All these measures will take time and energy. The magnitude of problems and wasted years make the task difficult. The Balkans has never been a place of easy solutions.
Open the doors to NATO and the EU
This is a time to be resolute. The Ukraine war makes delay unwise and appeasement foolish. The US and EU should slam the door shut on Open Balkans and open the doors to NATO and the EU.
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Things will be worse for Russians
In my piece last week on how bad things could get, I gave short shrift to the situation inside Russia. I noted only that Putin is using his war against Ukraine as an opportunity to complete Moscow’s transition to autocracy. But there will be other consequences, especially on the economy. Branko Milanovic takes a look at these in two well-crafted posts, one on the short-term and one on the long-term. I recommend reading him, but I’ll offer here a layman’s account of what I think he says.
The short term is bad
Branko uses past economic crises in Russia, especially in the 1990s, to come to a rough guess at how sanctions might affect growth:
One can thus, very roughly, put the expected decline in 2022-23 at high single digits, or low double digits: it is not going to be as sharp as in 1992, nor as (relatively) mild as in 1998.
He also guesstimates that unemployment could go back up to 7-8%, with inflation rising sharply due to the ruble’s fall. That’s pretty bad, especially for lower incomes. He judges government policy responses so far “very weak,” because there are no good choices to be made.
Bottom line:
The coming years of Putin’s rule will thus look very much like the worst years of Yeltsin’s rule.
https://braveneweurope.com/branko-milanovic-russias-economic-prospects-the-short-term
The long term is worse
Next Branko looks at the long term, assuming that sanctions will remain in place for decades, because that is what American sanctions generally do. He identifies two possible strategies for Russia: import substitution and a pivot to Asia. But Russia lacks the industrial base and growing labor supply required for import substitution as well as the infrastructure and investment funds required for a pivot to Asia.
Bottom line:
…the future of the Eurasian continent looks very much like its past: the maritime areas along the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts will be fairly rich, much better-off than the significant large continental areas in the middle. Th[is] opens up the question of how politically viable will be such an uneven distribution of economic activity: will migrations, or political reconfigurations “solve” such disequilibria?
https://braveneweurope.com/branko-milanovic-long-term-difficulties-of-import-substitution-and-delocalization
It’s not just the economy
Let me add a few words about the broader social implications of this dire scenario. Putin isn’t going to allow freedom of expression if most of it will be criticism of him. So he has already taken charge of virtually all the media and made criticism of the war in Ukraine (even calling it a war) illegal. Domestic oppression is the necessary counterpart to a war that most Russians did not expect and don’t want.
In addition, Western sanctions will create money-making opportunities for evading them. The miscreants will often be people involved in the country’s secret services and the managers of state-controlled businesses. Putin has surrounded himself with former colleagues from the KGB, the security service where he started his career. His chosen oligarchs are already strong.
The West will try to damage the interests of the KGBers and oligarchs with personal sanctions on their finances, foreign property, and travel. But the smartest and luckiest of them will wriggle free. A society already plagued with organized crime will find itself firmly in the grip of whoever can help Putin evade Western sanctions.
The West is not immune
A Russian Mafia state does nothing to help the cause of democracy and freedom. You can hope Russians will rebel and chase out Putin and his cronies, but hope is not a policy. Nor can anyone in the West be sure that some Europeans and Americans won’t help Putin’s corrupt governance, as some did before the Ukraine invasion. Germany didn’t wander blindly into the Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline. German politicians, including former Chancellor Schroeder, guided Berlin there.
In the US, the Ukraine invasion has frightened most Republicans out of their romance with Putin. But some still spout his praise, especially lead talker Tucker Carlson and lead presidential candidate Donald Trump:
They admire him as a smart and decisive autocrat. They care not about corruption. Ukrainian President Zelensky is fortunate indeed that the president who tried to withhold weapons to extort dirt on candidate Biden is no longer in office.
In addition, the war is already roiling Western economies, hiking the price of oil, and creating vast uncertainty for European and American trade and investment. What happens in Moscow doesn’t stay in Moscow. Things will be worse for the Russians, but the West is not immune.
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Stevenson’s army, March 12
Moment of reflection: Two years ago today, SAIS shut down and I had to teach my first Zoom class.
-FT has good article on Putin’s inner circle.
-NYT debunks Russian claim of US bioweapons lab
– Fred Kaplan reviews Prof Sarotte’s book about NATO.
-AP notes how Congress has pushed Biden on Ukraine.
– WSJ notes China gave nuclear security guarantees to Ukraine in 2013.
And the start of Daylight Savings Time tonight reminds me of the time Congress was considering some change in the law and an Iowa lady wrote to her Senator: “I don’t like Daylight Savings at all. The extra hour of sunlight turns my grass brown.”
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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This is how bad things could get
Russia is expanding its bombing in Ukraine to the west and deploying its artillery for intensified barrages on Kyiv. Poland is reaching the limits of its capacity to take in refugees. So are other near neighbors. Moscow is accusing the US of supporting biological and chemical warfare research in Ukraine. Russian forces have already taken control of several nuclear power plants. Moscow has also thrown a monkey wrench into negotiations on re-entry of the US into the Iran nuclear deal.
How bad could things get?
Pretty bad. Here are some guesses:
- The Russians could lay siege to Kyiv and obliterate its governing institutions, displacing many of those who remain of its 2.9 million pre-war population.
- They could also destroy what remains of Ukraine’s air force and its ability to operate. That is presumaby the purpose of their attacks on airfields in the west.
- Poland could limit the intake of refugees, forcing many to remain displaced and vulnerable inside Ukraine.
- Russia often accuses its adversaries of doing things it intends to do. Mocow’s obviously false accusations about biological and chemical weapons may presage Moscow’s use of them.
- Russian forces have already risked disaster in occupying nuclear power plants. Their continued operation depends on Ukrainians and electricity supplies that are at risk. A meltdown like the one at Chernobyl in 1986 would be far more catastrophic under current conditions.
- Moscow may de facto scupper the nuclear deal and try to trade with Iran despite US sanctions. That would allow Tehran to proceed with enrichment and nuclear weapons research.
- Putin is using the war in Ukraine to impose a dictatorial regime inside Russia, making dissent and protest ever more difficult.
All the while, Russia will continue to attack population centers, medical facilities, and schools throughout Ukraine. This “Grozny” strategy is a war crime, but then so is the war of aggression Moscow launched without provocation.
Sanctions aren’t likely to work quickly
The NATO Alliance meanwhile continues sitting on its military hands while Russia crosses multiple red lines. The EU and US are imposing more sanctions on trade and investment, but those rarely if ever change an aggressor’s mind quickly. You are far more likely to get what you want from them when you negotiate lifting them rather than when you impose them. The day when that might be possible is far off.
Military responses have been ruled out
President Biden has so far prioritized prevention of a wider war. He has repeatedly emphasized that Americans will not fight in Ukraine. The Pentagon has apparently blocked transfer of military aircraft from Poland to Ukraine on grounds that might cause Russia to attack Poland and trigger NATO’s mutual defense commitment. The US can’t send the best air defense systems because they require trained personnel that Ukraine doesn’t have and can’t produce in short order.
The Americans and other NATO allies are sending massive arms shipments to the Ukrainians, whose commitment to fighting for themselves should not be doubted. But it may not suffice. Ultimately, Russia has resources, technology, manpower, and immorality that Ukraine cannot equal. We are all likely to suffer the consequences.
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