Last year’s Munich Security Conference in Germany produced “a 12-step plan towards greater security in Ukraine and the Euro-Atlantic region”[1].
The following line opens the document: “The conflict in and around Ukraine,” narrowing down the Russo-Ukrainian hostilities in the eastern part of Ukraine to a merely internal Ukrainian dispute.
No wonder that with such a classification of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, the corridors and off-record side events of the conference have been abundantly saturated with arguments that the seizure of Crimea and the Donbas by Russian troops and Russia-backed separatists is a direct consequence of the Ukrainian establishment’s shortsighted actions (if not provocations) – first the Orange Revolution of 2004, to overturn a rigged presidential election, and then the EuroMaidan Revolution of 2013-2014, which ended Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency.
Simply speaking, the question to Ukrainians was the following: when you were stirring up all this trouble in Kyiv – what were you expecting Russia to do? Definitely not to merely sit and watch how its zone of influence is drifting to the West.
In May 2020, Russian policymakers probably posed the exact same question to the Belarusians. Given that BYPOL (a network of dissident former officers from the Belarusian security services and the criminal justice system) has documented widespread use of Russian weapons and ammunition used by government forces to put down the recent anti-Alexander Lukashenko protests[2], Minsk has probably realized that if Kremlin is left to decide upon the answer by itself, it would not be much different from that in Donbas or Crimea.
Historical ambitions
The presumption that Russia’s aggression on its western borders is a compulsory measure, dictated by its neighbors’ internal follies is, however, historically inaccurate at the very least.
The annexation of Crimea for example is by no means a spontaneous or sporadic decision or an act of vengeance or punishment for expelling Yanukovych, a devoted servant of Russian interests in Ukraine.
It is a part of a long-lasting and systemic strategy, with roots going back to the Russian Empire. It was an aspiration of probably every Russian tsar to access (and ideally – to control) both the cold and the warm seas of the European continent – those being the Baltic and the Mediterranean ones[3].
Hence, part of Russia’s grand strategy historically was to control at least the Istanbul straits – the Bosporus, if not the Dardanelles – the gates between the Mediterranean and the Black Seas[4].
Russian decisionmakers have brought this strategic ambition through centuries and the seizure of Crimea is their first grand success – a true culmination since the defeat of the Russian Empire in the Crimean War of 1856 and the disintegration of the USSR in 1991, which left Crimea as part of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.
Another part of Russia’s long-lasting foreign policy has always been the unification of the Slavs and the creation of an overarching “Russian World” – an area of Russian culture, language, and Orthodox Christianity from the Kamchatka region and up to the Balkans.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union has, however, considerably undermined these endeavors as well, enabling the emergence of numerous nation-states with their own language, culture, faith, and more importantly – their own opinion over common past and future.
Nonetheless, today Russia is as close to the reinstallment of these agendas as possible.
While the annexation of Crimea was a bold move towards Russia’s maritime ambitions in the Mediterranean, the potential military intervention in Belarus that might result in both de facto and de jure takeover of the republic by Moscow (leaving Lukashenko for some time merely as a nominal president), has the potential to become a triumph for Russia’s aspired historical mission of gathering and protecting Slavic lands from hostile Western neighbors.
Furthermore, if one imagines that Russia is successful in such an “Anschluss,” would the idea of a potential land corridor to Kaliningrad region through Lithuania in a decade or two then sound as inconceivable as it sounds today?
Strategic patience
These two examples of Russia`s grand strategy priorities show how consistent and forbearing can Moscow be.
Regardless of its economic hardship, its erosion of democracy, the worsening of its global image and reputation, and even regardless of international sanctions, the Kremlin has the luxury to apply a policy that most Western democracies simply can not afford – strategic patience.
With all primary media controlled by the state, the security services being omnipotent and corruption widespread, it’s no wonder Russia is able to persuade not only its elites but also its citizens to endure a little bit more, while the Kremlin is busy safeguarding its power and influence.
Moscow’s control over public opinion and “public freedoms” of its citizens allows yet another aspect of its foreign policy – Russia does not really need to solve any problems.
It has well excelled at creating problems – Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and Ossetia, Crimea and the Donbas, Syria. And now Belarus has all the chances to fall into line with this list. The Kremlin has, however, no need or, moreover, haste, for solving them.
The solution (as well as trade-offs) is expected of other countries and their international partners, who do not have the luxury of being, as Vladislav Surkov puts it – a “sovereign democracy”[5], rather – a regular Western one, much more sensitive to the demands of their own citizens, businesses and the international community.
So, while these citizens and businesses call for certain reactions from their Western governments, threatening otherwise to deprive them of political support, the Kremlin can allow itself to sit and watch how one artificial crisis, installed by the Russian proxies, evolves into another crisis – usually an internal political one, fueled by popular discontent with a country’s leadership response for Moscow’s actions.
Accommodation politics
Such discontent has produced a number of policies that have been used by Western democracies over time.
“Appeasement,” for example, was a policy to cajole a nemesis.
“Rapprochement” was an attempt to make an adversary more friendly.
“Detente” was an effort to take a break.
Today, however, we are witnessing what seems to be a new kind of European foreign policy – accommodation politics.
While previously accommodation was part of internal policies, usually tackling ethnic, religious, gender or even ideological issues within a specific country, today it seems that Europe’s leading economies are explicitly adapting this approach to their foreign relations, specifically, in their relationships with Russia.
Accommodation is rather similar to appeasement. However, when you appease someone, you do not necessarily change your inner conditions and implicit principles. When you accommodate someone, you do.
You may disregard your beliefs, your values, and your traditions in order to make the other party comfortable with you.
And it seems that Moscow has been strategically patient long enough for Western democracies to start accommodating its behavior. European citizens and businesses must be putting truly unbearable pressure on their governments that they are almost ready to forgive acts of aggression, the breach of international law, encroachment over human rights, neglect for the rule of law, and limitation of democratic liberties.
Take the last remarks of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s president, made last week on German-Russian relations, where he defended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, intended to deliver Russian gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea, as “one of the few bridges between Russia and Europe in an otherwise deteriorating diplomatic and security climate”[6].
Armin Laschet, the new chairman of Germany’s ruling Christian Democrats, shares such views explicitly supporting the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, despite the opposition of the U.S. and other European partners[7]. These are high-ranking officials of Germany, a country that suffered from the attack of Russian hackers, who in 2015 broke into Bundestag servers and seized thousands of emails, including those of Angela Merkel.
Last year demarche of a European delegation representing 24 member states to the U.S. State Department pursuant to Washington’s decision to broaden the scope of sanctions in response to the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea[8] might be another example of an accommodatingly dovish European policy towards Moscow.
Finally, the winter session of the Council of Europe in 2020 might also be perceived as an unprecedented demonstration of unconditional reintegration of a member previously accused of having undermined all of PACE’s basic principles – human rights, democracy and rule of law. This refers to the Russian Federation, of course. As the Atlantic Council has put it – “PACE risks becoming a watchdog with no bite”[9].
All these are rather explicit examples of how values and principles might give way to pragmatism and utilitarianism (the most intriguing part of it, however, is that these are often the same Western partners that discourage Ukraine in its efforts to apply the same pragmatic and utilitarian approaches in our public procurement procedures or economic stimuli).
These are not, however, the only signals of European foreign policy drifting towards accommodation. These are clear signals that Russia’s strategic patience works and European democracies seem to lack both the patience and an answer on how to deal with Moscow.
Ignoring it should not be an option, though. Accommodating it – even so. For if we consider that the only way to accommodate the rule of force is by sacrificing the rule of law, then such logic might quite soon lead us to accommodate aggression by sacrificing sovereignty. Donbas and Crimea should be a bitter reminder of this.
Russia is a country that “deliberately chooses confrontation rather than partnership, and the European Union – both its national capitals and its institutions – must recognize this”[10].
Europe must find an alternative to accommodating crooks before accommodated crooks will become an alternative to Europe.
[1] https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/group-statement/easlg-twelve-steps-toward-greater-security-in-ukraine-and-the-euro-atlantic-region/
[2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/04/belarus-lukashenko-protests-election-russia-putin-brutal-crackdown-weapons-ammunition-bypol/
[3] https://www.unav.edu/web/global-affairs/detalle/-/blogs/russia-s-military-strategy-and-doctrine
[4] www.jstor.org/stable/2009311
[5] https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/sovereign-democracy-a-new-russian-idea-or-a-pr-project/?wptouch_preview_theme=enabled
[6] https://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Reden/DE/Frank-Walter-Steinmeier/Interviews/2021/210206-Interview-Rheinische-Post.html
[7] https://www.reuters.com/article/germany-politics-cdu-nordstream-idUSL8N2K04HD
[8] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nordstream-eu-united-states-idUSKCN25A1CJ
[9] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/pace-risks-becoming-a-watchdog-with-no-bite/
[10] https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/02/13/the-european-union-must-face-up-to-the-real-russia
