The Russian Challenge

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