Deciphering Russian aggression
Russian armored vehicles move along a highway in Crimea on Jan. 18. Russia has concentrated an estimated 100,000 troops with tanks and other heavy weapons near Ukraine in what the West fears could be a prelude to an invasion. Credit: AP
By Cathy YoungDoes the intensifying Russia-Ukraine conflict signal the possible start of a war in Europe, or of a new Russian push for regional dominance? What should America’s role be in addressing this crisis? These are the questions we are facing at the start of 2022, with Russia massing troops on the Ukrainian border and demanding major concessions from NATO.
What does the Kremlin want, and what should the White House do?
The United States and Britain have warned that Russia’s moves signal a full-scale invasion, with the goal of either installing a pro-Kremlin government in Ukraine or annexing the separatist-controlled eastern territories. The dominant view in Western Europe seems to be that this is a bluff directed at NATO and the U.S.
Russian demands include no further eastward NATO expansion, a halt to NATO military cooperation with nonmembers such as Ukraine, and the removal of NATO troops and weapons from countries that joined the alliance after 1997 (including Poland, the Baltic republics and the Balkan countries).
The sympathetic view of Russia’s goals — traditionally held on the left, but currently at least as fashionable on the nationalist/populist right, exemplified by Fox News host Tucker Carlson — is that Russian President Vladimir Putin fears NATO "encirclement" and wants Ukraine to be a buffer against a potential military threat.
Obviously, short of psychic readings, no one knows what Putin really thinks. But there are good reasons to believe the NATO fearmongering is mostly for purposes of propaganda — foreign and domestic.
For one thing, both NATO’s Partnership for Peace program (launched in 1994, with Russia included) and the NATO-Russia Council (created in 2002) provide a framework for NATO-Russia military cooperation and establish an obligation to consult Russia about its security concerns.
For another, given Russia’s nuclear arsenal, a NATO military attack on Russia is unthinkable no matter how many of its neighbors join the alliance — as retired Russian general and former arms negotiator Vladimir Dvorkin noted in a column for the independent Russian website EJ.ru in 2008, after Russia’s war in Georgia. The real peril to Russia, Dvorkin warned, was "civilizational isolation" if it continued to resist economic and political liberalization and found itself surrounded by neighbors integrated into the democratic capitalist West.
Most likely, it’s this kind of "encirclement" — by liberal democracies, not military adversaries — that Putin fears. This is why many Russia-watchers see Putin as primarily a chaos agent. Donald Trump’s former Russia adviser Fiona Hill writes that Putin "wants to evict the United States from Europe." But even that may be part of a bigger strategy: to foment continual instability that undermines the Western liberal order which threatens his power.
From that standpoint, any number of outcomes in Ukraine could count as a success for Putin, as long as Ukraine’s quest for liberal democracy is thwarted or crippled.
What can, and should, the U.S. do? Obviously, no one wants to go to war in Europe over Ukraine. But anti-interventionists underestimate the danger of letting an aggressively anti-liberal regime dictate its will to a widening circle of its neighbors.
Despite some verbal missteps, President Biden has chosen what may be the best course of action in a tough quandary: boosting defensive aid to Kyiv and stepping up sanctions against Moscow. Far from getting us closer to war, this strategy makes war less likely by making invasion costlier for Russia.
Exporting freedom is a foolhardy venture. But let’s not enable exporters of tyranny.
Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, are her own.
Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.
