Those unfamiliar with the former Soviet states have struggled to understand why Russian President Vladimir Putin would decide to launch a war against his Slavic neighbors in Ukraine. U.S. and European foreign policy, grounded more in realism, where practical and economic factors drive foreign policy, are perhaps easier to understand to the outsider.
However, Russia’s foreign policy objectives are more opaque and driven by factors that are harder to comprehend unless one looks at it through the lens of Russian history and sees that it is the basis for today’s constructivist foreign policy of the Russian Federation.
Russia has a foreign policy that is relatively linear – once you understand the “logic” that the Kremlin uses. The reasoning that Putin uses when discussing how he will “defend” Russia is based on an interpretation of the West that differs entirely from how a western-educated person would understand the modern world – and modernity. The scars of battles from centuries ago taught the Tsars and Putin the importance of having “buffer zones” that act as battle lands, thwarting a western incursion before it could reach Moscow.
Ukraine – which means the rough equivalent of “borderland” – is a country that Russia has historically considered to be part of its territories. Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, the three eastern Slavic countries and most important Republics of the Soviet Union, are viewed by Putin as being part of Russia’s historic lands and identity. The Russian’s historic memory is that Slavic peoples were converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 988 when Kyivan Rus (a medieval state with its center in Kyiv), was baptized. Putin’s June 2021 missive on the subject succinctly lays out his view that the historic closeness between Ukraine and Russia is so immediate that Ukraine’s future is inherently tied to Russia.
Putin’s lack of faith in the West is grounded in the 2004 accession of the former Soviet Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) into NATO. Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin had stated that U.S. President Bill Clinton had promised that this would not happen, and it is seen as a betrayal by the West that took advantage of the weak state of post-Soviet Russia.
Thus, when Putin saw that Ukraine was hoping to go the same direction as the Baltic states, he interpreted it as being a window of opportunity for the West (namely the United States) to gobble up its ally. The alarm bells set off in Moscow triggered a classic move in the Russian playbook.
As happened with Transnistria in Moldova (early 1990s), and in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia (2008), Russia acted in 2014 to destabilize Ukraine by striking-up a conflict. Moscow hoped that a clash in largely Russian-speaking Donbas and Crimea would later be converted into a “frozen conflict” (i.e. a formerly “hot conflict” that has largely cooled-down, but remains legally unresolved).
This strategy attempts to bar the occupied country with a frozen conflict from being able to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and close the door to the European Union. Ultimately, this is Putin’s desire: to keep the west at bay and from encroaching closer to Moscow.
The West, despite having dealt with Russia’s strategy of frozen conflicts before, has not improved how it handles such situations. As history has shown, US sanctions do not necessarily achieve their intended result (case study: US’ sanctions against Cuba since 1960). Likewise, making general promises of NATO membership, without any clear timelines, perhaps operates against the national security of the countries who wrongly translate the promise as a real guarantee of quasi-NATO support for them, whereas it would be wiser to interpret these promises as rather being statements of general support and that the NATO countries (namely the USA) will not oppose that country’s future membership in the Organization.
Thus, the populist Ukrainian politicians who promise their voters NATO membership “soon” are both offering empty promises – as the decision to join NATO is ultimately not in their hands – but also gives Ukrainian citizens a false sense of a present security that does not exist since being a NATO “partner” does not assure security as NATO “membership” would.
What can we expect next from Moscow? It seems clear that Moscow will not be intimidated by more sanctions. The expulsion of Russia from SWIFT is difficult, but it could also operate against the long term national security interests of the United States as it would make the tracking of money by US intelligence more complicated – thus, secondarily, also making the monitoring of US sanctions against Russia harder. More importantly, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated that expelling Russia from SWIFT, by the United States, would be deemed as “an act of war” against Russia – something that the United States, having recently fled Afghanistan, is likely unwilling to risk.
Russia, historically, like the Soviet Union before it, often used brinkmanship as a preferred strategy to gain what it wanted from the West. Increasing the stakes to the point that the West blinks could be what is on Putin’s mind now.
Given Russian elections in two years, and the declining popularity of Putin due to the state of the Russian economy, Covid, and recent pension reforms, it would seem to be against the interests of the twenty-one year-long leader of Russia to risk a military conflict with Ukraine today that could lead to the greater domestic destabilization of his own country should the war turn out to not be the stunning victory for which he would hope. Russian citizens could well lose their taste for their President’s push to conquer Ukraine once the bodies of their sons are returned from a war with a “brotherly nation” for which the average Russian does not understand the need.
Though it is uncertain what Putin may plan next, it would seem that he may have already achieved his objective: All eyes are on Russia – giving it the status of being “a player.” Biden has publicly stated that the United States would not send its troops to back Ukraine if Russia were to invade. In the coming weeks we will see what Putin desires, but as of now, it would seem there is little he could gain from further attacks against Ukraine, only further risks to his own claim to power, should he toss the dice on an invasion into Ukraine.
