The Russian Challenge
20150605RussianChallengeGilesHansonLyneNixeySherrWoodUpdate
20150605RussianChallengeGilesHansonLyneNixeySherrWoodUpdate
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>Russian</strong> <strong>Challenge</strong><br />
A War of Narratives and Arms<br />
In their masterful study <strong>The</strong> Menace of Unreality, Peter<br />
Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss depict Russia’s information<br />
offensive in the West as a potent synergy of innuendo, false<br />
analogies, non sequitur and contradiction. 136 Yet this might<br />
also serve as a commentary on how Russia disinforms itself.<br />
<strong>The</strong> synergy is regularly refreshed by the elements of truth<br />
that it doubtless contains. Reality checks, where they have<br />
occurred, have led to a redrawing of lines rather than a reexamination<br />
of underlying assumptions.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Kremlin has difficulty understanding that Europe’s<br />
divisions are not objective facts defined by immutable<br />
political fault-lines, but realities subject to change. Putin is<br />
also temperamentally averse to the idea that for Europe’s<br />
elites, rules matter and partnership with Russia requires<br />
mutual trust as much as material interest. His interpretation<br />
of the West’s motivations and agenda assumed that Europe’s<br />
attachment to the post-Cold War system was as cynical as<br />
his own. Owing to these faulty premises, he was unprepared<br />
for the alienation of Angela Merkel and the reinforcement<br />
of transatlantic links. Thus the EU’s adoption of Tier 3<br />
sanctions under German leadership and in unison with<br />
the United States came as a complete surprise.<br />
But arguably Putin’s greatest error was to underestimate<br />
the resilience of Ukraine. Two months after the Kremlin<br />
declared that ‘Ukraine is ours’, Yanukovych fled in disgrace,<br />
and Russia found itself with no influence at all. Within<br />
weeks, the state re-emerged. Ukraine reconstituted military<br />
force and by May 2014 had begun to win battles against the<br />
insurgents. Outside its initial strongholds, the insurgency<br />
failed to gain a critical mass, and by late summer it was on<br />
the point of collapse.<br />
None of this means that the Kremlin cannot achieve its core<br />
objectives: to create a semi-‘mobilization’ regime at home,<br />
to wreck Ukraine if it cannot control it, to preserve Russia’s<br />
western borderlands as a ‘privileged space’ and to make<br />
Europe accept that ‘there can be no security without Russia’. In<br />
any serious undertaking, there are mistakes and setbacks. But<br />
in the <strong>Russian</strong> mind war is a clash of wills, not an accounting<br />
exercise. <strong>The</strong> Kremlin’s cognitive framework contains some<br />
hard truths for Western policy-makers: an existential faith<br />
in Russia’s greatness, a willingness to accept risk, damage<br />
and opprobrium in the service of enduring state interests.<br />
‘He who wills the end wills the means.’ Russia’s custodians<br />
believe that ‘reform’ and trust in the country’s enemies led to<br />
the USSR’s collapse, and they have no intention of repeating<br />
that experience. <strong>The</strong>se predilections suggest that the path to<br />
accommodation will be long and arduous.<br />
Clarity and purpose<br />
Against one benchmark of assessment, its own burdens and<br />
priorities, the West’s response to events since February 2014<br />
has been impressive. Against a second, <strong>Russian</strong> tenacity, the<br />
adequacy of this response is far from certain. For the West<br />
to raise and maintain its game, several revisions of thinking<br />
and practice warrant consideration:<br />
• Whether the West plays its cards well or badly, it<br />
faces a protracted struggle with Russia. <strong>The</strong> ‘crisis’<br />
paradigm (which stimulates a Pavlovian search<br />
for ‘endgames’) is illusory. Over the past 20 years,<br />
Russia has attempted to limit the sovereignty of<br />
neighbours within the framework of a treaty regime<br />
that recognized no such limitation. It has now torn<br />
up that framework. Today there is no international<br />
law east of the Narva and Prut. Putin’s resurrection of<br />
the notion that language and ethnicity – rather than<br />
citizenship and internationally recognized borders –<br />
are the proper basis of statehood is a test for the legal<br />
order elsewhere. Statements by Lavrov and Deputy<br />
Foreign Minister Konstantin Dolgov to the effect that<br />
Moldova and the Baltic states should ‘consider events<br />
in Ukraine and draw conclusions’ confirm that major<br />
interests are at stake. 137 <strong>The</strong>se interests will not be<br />
protected by a patch-and-mend approach.<br />
• <strong>The</strong> West therefore faces stark choices. <strong>The</strong> merit of<br />
the ‘realist’ prescription – that Russia be conceded<br />
its sphere of influence – is that it goes to the heart<br />
of the matter. <strong>The</strong> defect of the prescription is that<br />
Europe will not be able to endure it. We are no longer<br />
in a 19th-century world where ‘zones of security’<br />
can be produced by lines on maps or people treated<br />
like furniture in a room. Betraying Ukraine – what<br />
else would it be? – and, soon enough, Moldova and<br />
Georgia will add to the stock of Vichyite states in<br />
Europe with no love for what remains of the West,<br />
and even less respect. It will then be entirely rational<br />
for Latvians or Poles to ask why, if the West is<br />
unwilling to uphold the Paris Charter by means short<br />
of war, it should be willing to uphold the Washington<br />
Treaty by means of war when ‘hybrid’ threats arise.<br />
• <strong>The</strong> West is then left with the task of defending the<br />
post-Cold War settlement and deterring those who<br />
would damage it further. To some, it is axiomatic<br />
that this will lead to a ‘new Cold War’. 138 Very<br />
possibly. 139 But the Cold War was not the reason for<br />
136<br />
Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss, <strong>The</strong> Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money (<strong>The</strong> Interpreter, Institute of Modern<br />
Russia, 2014), p. 5.<br />
137<br />
Lavrov’s statement at Valdai Club meeting, 23 October 2014.<br />
138<br />
Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro, ‘Consequences of a New Cold War’, Survival (IISS, April/May 2015).<br />
139<br />
But not in that form. See James Sherr, ‘Russia and the EU: <strong>The</strong> End of Illusions?’, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, June 2014, https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/epaper_aupo2014.pdf.<br />
Chatham House | 31