Vladimir Putin is running rings around the west

Vladimir Putin speaking during his annual New Year's address to the nation in the Kremlin. Picture: AFP.

Nobody knows whether Vladimir Putin will invade Ukraine, but it is increasingly clear that a divided and confused Western alliance doesn’t know how to deal with the challenge he poses.

Lost in a narcissistic fog of grandiose pomposity, Western diplomats spent the past decade dismissing the Russian president as the knuckle-dragging relic of a discarded past. As then-Secretary of State John Kerry sniffed during Mr. Putin’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped up pretext.”

Neville Chamberlain learned more from failure at Munich than the current generation of Western leaders learned from failure in Crimea. Convinced that the old rules of power politics don’t apply in our enlightened posthistorical century, Europeans nattered on about soft power only to find themselves locked out of key U.S.-Russia talks over Ukraine. As China and Russia grew more powerful and assertive, Americans enthusiastically embraced the politics of mean-spirited polarisation and domestic culture wars. Now the Biden administration is simultaneously proclaiming overseas that America is back, in all its order-building awesomeness, and maintaining at home that democracy is one voting-rights bill away from collapse.

People rally in front of a huge placard reading "Say No To Putin" in Kiev. Picture: AFP.

Pathetic throwback that he is, Mr. Putin used his time differently, rebuilding the Soviet Union under the nose of a feckless and distracted West. Because Russia hasn’t annexed breakaway republics, many observers underestimate how successful Mr. Putin’s reassembly of the U.S.S.R. has been. But it is hegemony, not uniformity, that he wants. Stalin insisted on enrolling Ukraine and Belarus as founding members of the United Nations while they were part of the Soviet Union; Mr. Putin might be happy to keep them nominally independent under Russian control. In many Soviet republics, Moscow ruled through local strongmen. When the Soviet Union collapsed, leaders like Azerbaijan’s Ayaz Mutalibov, Turkmenistan’s Saparmurat Niyazov and Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev made a seamless transition to running the republics as personal fiefs. Mr. Putin’s goal is to re-establish ultimate control while leaving subordinate rulers in place.

It’s working. In 2020 he reasserted Russian control over the South Caucasus by ending the Azerbaijani-Armenian war on his terms. Last spring as the West huffed and puffed, Mr. Putin kept Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in power. Last week Mr. Putin established himself as the supreme arbiter of Kazakhstan, providing the political and military assistance that allowed President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to crush a revolt. In most of the former Soviet Union today, Mr. Putin decides who rules and who weeps. Of the 15 constituent republics of the old Soviet Union, only five (the three Baltic states, Moldova and Ukraine) have held him at arm’s length. Georgia clings precariously to the shreds of a once-robust independence; the American withdrawal from Afghanistan leaves countries like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan more dependent on Moscow than ever.

Vladimir Putin attends a video emergency meeting of the Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) focused on the situation in Kazakhstan. Picture: AFP.

Meanwhile, the West is less well positioned to withstand Russian pressure on Ukraine than it was in 2014. Europe’s doubts about American commitment and wisdom are greater than they were then. German pacifism is more deeply entrenched. Brexit has undermined relations among Europe’s chief military powers. Europe’s dependency on Russian oil and natural gas leaves the West as vulnerable as ever to energy blackmail — and sharply limits the West’s ability to impose economic sanctions on a partner without which it can neither heat its homes nor run its factories. Mr. Putin also knows that economic sanctions will fall more heavily on Europe than on the U.S., deepening the fractures in an alliance he hopes to destroy. With oil prices above $80 a barrel and China backing his play, Mr. Putin may be less vulnerable to economic sanctions than the White House hopes.

Washington, meanwhile, is unintentionally but unmistakably telegraphing its vulnerability to blackmail. With the Biden administration lobbying Congress to block sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Moscow can’t be blamed for thinking that the Americans are prepared to pay a price to preserve “stability.”

Mr. Putin is having a great crisis so far and seems to have little to fear. His successes in Belarus and Kazakhstan have thoroughly cowed domestic opposition. The run-up in energy prices gives him a cash cushion. The crisis has again put Russia at the centre of world politics, demonstrated Western weakness, terrified Ukraine, and highlighted Mr. Putin’s mastery of the game of thrones. His decisions about what to do next will depend entirely on what he thinks will advance Russia’s core goals. Haggle at the bargaining table while Western unity frays? Seize a chunk of Ukraine while the West sputters with impotent moralism? Magnanimously accept Western concessions and return to stability until the next time?

Mr. Putin’s success is the measure of Western intellectual and political failure. Until Western leaders emerge from the mists of posthistorical illusion and recover the lost art of effective foreign policy, he will continue to make gains at our expense.

The Wall Street Journal