Western politicians, meanwhile, are portrayed as nincompoops, bumblers and creeps. A recent cartoon pictured Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande as characters from the Wizard of Oz, coming to ask Putin to give them heart, brains and pluck, respectively.
There are many people in the West who concede that Putin is winning. There is of course Donald Trump who admires Putin and seems to echo Russian propaganda when he talks about Obama. But even analysts with more brains and expertise than the Republican Party’s presidential nominee also think that Putin has twisted the hapless West around his little finger.
They point out that Putin is having his way in Ukraine and getting the better of Obama in Syria. He has helped Euroskeptics carry the Brexit vote and is supporting right-wing parties in key European countries as they weaken the European Union. He’s even meddling in the US election and appears to have engaged The Donald as his surrogate.
Putin’s ability to meet with a number of world leaders on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meeting in China is seen as yet another example of his supposed triumphal romp around the global political arena.
This reasoning is reminiscent of the Cold War, when there was a school of thought that presented Soviet policies as a never-ending string of victories scored at the expense of the West. Soviet emigres, most notably Writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, were prominent in this field, going back all the way to the Missile Gap scare of the 1950s.
Doomsayers predicting the imminent communist takeover of the world suffered a serious setback when communism, not capitalism, suddenly collapsed, but now they’re back, reincarnated as fear-mongerers about Putin.
The truth is that, just as Soviet successes got them very little in the end, so Putin’s “victories” are paying him precious few dividends. His support for neo-fascists and nationalists around the EU is a mirror image of Soviet funding of communists in France and Italy. Despite coming close to being part of some governing coalitions, they were never of any serious use to the Kremlin.
In actuality, just like the Soviets, Putin is merely playing on existing fissures in Western societies, not creating them from scratch. The EU is in crisis and Europe is in the midst of a populist, nationalist, and mostly right-wing, backlash against the liberal idea of European integration. Similarly, the rise of Trump is a symptom of a deep malaise within American society, not the result of Putin’s machinations. And his preference for Trump may actually cost Trump support among the remaining honest Republicans. Certainly it has turned away many voters of Eastern European origin who initially had been inclined to see him as a new Reagan – outwardly foolish but staunch in his support for democracy.
Putin may be happy to have Britain weaken the E.U., but Russia’s well-publicized glee may backfire if Brexit causes an economic recession. Plus, Brexit may actually strengthen the E.U. if it spurs Brussels to institute badly needed reforms.
And even Ukraine should probably thank Putin. True, many of its citizens have died fighting in the east, and many more Ukrainians find themselves living under occupation or in a lawless thug enclave in the Donbas. It has lost control of large chunks of its territory, but along with it several million of anti-Ukrainian, pro-Russian people found themselves unable to participate in elections and undermine the Ukrainian state. Given the present composition of the country’s electorate, Viktor Yanukovych would never have been elected president.
If Crimea and Donbas remained part of Ukraine, anti-Ukrainian mood there would have only increased in the current economic situation. Now, ruled from Moscow or lorded over by armed thugs, they are much more likely to develop affection for Kyiv.
And strengthening national identity in opposition to a hated aggressor – especially in a country where nationhood is a novel concept – is certainly priceless. Putin has single-handedly ensured that Ukraine will never again acquiesce to being a Russian dependency.
Putin’s adventure in Syria can be best explained by his need to get back at the table with Obama: if he positions himself as a key player in Syria’s civil war, he might negotiate a more comprehensive agreement, in which Russia’s help in Syria could be obtained by a de facto recognition of the annexation of Crimea and the removal of sanctions. So far it hasn’t worked, while Russia is becoming entangled in a conflict in Syria which is intensifying and becoming more volatile, as the New York Times has reported.
Meanwhile, NATO, which Putin wants to undermine, has found a new purpose, while Ukraine has established strong ties with its neighbors, who are similarly concerned about Russian aggressive policies.
Four years ago, when Mitt Romney suggested that Russia was America’s No. 1 geopolitical foe, his statement was met with derision. Now, a consensus has emerged outside Trump’s election campaign that Romney wasn’t so far off the mark. It has been reported that U.S. Army has started to train its soldiers using models of Russian tanks.
True, despite the sanctions Putin has retained control of Crimea and has succeeded in freezing the conflict in the Donbas. The truth is that it was never possible to prevent this outcome. As in the time of the Cold War, the West is facing two major constraints in dealing with Russia. First, it is a nuclear power and a vast country. A military conflict with it impossible unless it attacks a NATO member first. Second, much like Soviet leaders, Putin doesn’t have to contend with any domestic opposition, a fact that no sanctions could alter.
Moreover, had sanctions severely crippled the Russian economy or had modern weaponry supplied to Ukraine allowed it to inflict a major defeat upon the separatists and their Russian backers, Purin could have been compelled to start an all-out war with Ukraine. This is not what anyone needs – least of all Ukraine.
And, unlike the Cold War era, when sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies in the aftermath of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had accomplished nothing, current sanctions – and the threat of others, more severe ones – have had an effect on Putin’s behavior. That’s because Russia is now integrated into the global economy and, moreover, Putin and his entourage keep their fortunes in the West and are therefore vulnerable to being frozen. In any case, Putin has decided not to push for a land link to Crimea, forcing Russia to incur considerable expenses and inflicting economic damage on an already impoverished region.
A sanctions regime is always liable to fray in time, especially since the conflict in Ukraine remains frozen. Plus, Russia is an enormous country spanning a number of regions, so boycotting it entirely would be impossible. Putin was a pariah in Brisbane two years ago but has come in from the cold at this year’s G-20 summit. It has changed nothing, as tighter export restrictions imposed on Russia in early September indicate.
Putin certainly is not winning – and by no means thumbing his nose at Obama and other Western leaders. But he is not losing either, because even though sanctions are biting ordinary Russians, he and his entourage remain rich and powerful, and their position inside the country has not been challenged.
But that is only in the short run. With Putin turning 64 in October, he will reach Brezhnev’s age in 1970, when the Soviet Union started to stagnate. The same forces that caused the Soviet Union to rot and eventually crumble are very much at work in today’s Russia. The Russian economy is inefficient, its population is backward and its adventurism abroad – in Syria and Ukraine for now, but probably in Central Asia and again in the Caucasus next – is costing it plenty and causing it to overextend. We may have to wait a while, but unlike Brezhnev, Putin probably won’t have the luxury of growing old and decrepit in the Kremlin in today’s more dynamic environment. Putin’s Russia will eventually follow Brezhnev’s Soviet Union to the dust heap of history.
